Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland Part 11

Silkworms' eggs cost 15, 20, or 25 francs an ounce, according to quality; and an ounce of good seed should produce from two to three hundred francs' worth of coc.o.o.ns. A man who 'makes' an ounce of seed requires six tables, 8 feet by 4, for his cages; and as some men make thirty-five ounces, chambers of great size are necessary for the accommodation of their worms; but breeders to so large an extent as this are the princes of the trade. As we pa.s.sed a farmhouse surrounded by mulberry trees and vineyards, my companion informed me that the farmer was his partner in worms and wine both, and that the wine promised to be the better speculation this year, for the fruit was in immense abundance. I saw afterwards that, at the time of vintage, grapes sold for pressing at from 6 to 10 francs the hundred kilos, while 12 and 13 francs was the price in 1863, and that in some districts of the Drome the owners of the presses had not barrels enough for even the first pressing.

The great want of wood on the hills in whose neighbourhood we now found ourselves, attracted attention in the time of Louis XIV., and that sovereign pa.s.sed severe laws for the protection of the forests that still remained. As usual, the mere severity of the laws made them fail of their object. Banishment and the galleys were the punishment for unauthorised cutting of forest trees, and death if fire were used. There is a paper in the _Journal de Physique_ of 1789,[96] on the disappearance of the forests of Dauphine, pointing out that when the woods are removed from the sides of mountains, the soil soon follows, and the district becomes utterly valueless. The writer traced the mischief to the emanc.i.p.ation of serfs, and the consequent formation of _communes_, where each man could do that which was right in his own eyes.

At any rate, whatever the reason, nothing can be conceived more bare than the dun-coloured rounded hills between the town of Die and the Col de Va.s.sieux, towards which we were making our way. The whole face of the country had the same parched look, and the soil seemed to be composed entirely of small stones, without any signs of moisture even in the watercourses. The Col de Va.s.sieux is not much more than 4,000 feet high, and forms a saddle between the Pic de S. Genix (5,450 feet) and the But de l'Aiglette (5,200 feet). A new foot-road has been made to the Col, with many windings; and great care has been taken to plant the sides of the hill with oak and hazel; so that already there is some appearance of coppice, and in the course of time there will be shade by the way--a luxury for which we longed in vain. The lower ground was covered with little scrubs of box, and with lavender, dwarfed and dry; but near the summit of the Col the lavender became vigorous and luxuriant, and carpeted the hillside with a rich abundance of blue, tempting us more than once to lie down and roll on the fragrant bed; though some of the older roots were not sufficiently yielding to make that performance as satisfactory as it might have been. This lavender is highly prized by the silkworm-keepers of Die, its bushy heads being almost exclusively used for the worms to spin their coc.o.o.ns in.

When we reached the top of the Col, Liotir confessed that he did not know which way to turn, and we agreed to follow the path till we should find some one to direct us. There was a farmhouse at no great distance, and thither we bent our steps; but the sole inhabitant could give no a.s.sistance, and, in default of information, Liotir generously proposed to treat me to a bottle of wine, over which we might discuss our further proceedings. The state of fever, however, to which the garlic and the dirt of Die had brought me, made it seem impossible to eat or drink anything; so I suggested instead that I should treat him, and that seemed to be rather what he had meant by his proposal. Nothing much came of our discussion, and we marched on hot and faint for an hour more, when a casual man told us that our straight line to the _Foire de Fondeurle_ lay across the plain on our left hand, and up a most objectionable-looking hill beyond, thickly covered with brushwood and showing no signs of a path.

As we crossed the plain, there was still the same total absence of water, and we reached the bottom of the hill in a state of mind and body which rebelled against the exertion of struggling with the sand and shingle and brushwood. Liotir thought it was useless to attempt it with no hope of water, and I held much the same view, only it was impossible really to think of giving it up. When at last we had surmounted all the difficulties which beset us, and stood on the highest point which had so far been in sight, we found ourselves on the edge of a vast plain of parched gra.s.s, with nothing to guide us in one direction rather than another. There was no human being in sight, no sign of water, nor any particle of shade; nothing but gra.s.s, brown and monotonous, with white cliffs miles away at the extremity of the plain. This was evidently the _Foire de Fondeurle_, and in it somewhere lay the glaciere, if only we could make out in which direction to begin to traverse the plain. In the earlier part of this century, a very famous fair was held on this wild and out-of-the-way table-land, to which many thousands of horses and mules and cattle of various kinds were brought from all quarters; but the fair has fallen off so much, that the man who had turned us up the last hill said there were only fourteen head of cattle in 1863, and very few of those were sold. M. Hericart de Thury describes this plain as lying in the calcareous sub-Alpine range of the south-east of France.

The woods here terminate at a height of 5,147 feet above the sea, and the _Foire de Fondeurle_ lies immediately above this point.

At last we made a bold dash across the plain, and after a time came upon some sheep, standing in a thick row, with their heads thrust under a low bank which afforded a little shade; and at no great distance from them sat the shepherd. He was a cripple, and his clothes were something worse than rags. He offered us a portion of the water he had in a detestable-looking skin; but he a.s.sured us it was quite warm, and had not been good to begin with, so we did not try it, though we were thirsty enough to have hailed a muddy pool with delight. Our new acquaintance knew nothing of the glaciere, but he belonged himself to the Chalet of Fondeurle, and as that was the only house on the whole plain, he told us to make for it. The surface of the plain seemed to have fallen through in many places, forming larger and smaller pits with steep sides of limestone. These were often of the size of a large field, and, as the deeper of them required circ.u.mvention, the shepherd told us that we must follow the line of little cairns which we should find here and there on our way, the only guide across the plain. He could not be sure himself in what direction the chalet lay; but if we kept to a certain tortuous line, we should come to it in time.

The way proved to be so very long, that we doubted whether such a consummation of our wishes would ever arrive: but at length, in a small dip at the farthest extremity of the plain, we saw the chalet, and, what was much more to us, saw a little run of water, carried from the rising ground by wooden pipes. It will be well for any future visitor to the chalet to go very warily, and to intrench himself in a strong position when he sees half-a-dozen huge dogs like black and white bears come out to attack him. Liotir had a stout stick, and I had a formidable ice-axe; and, moreover, we fortunately secured a wall in our rear: but with all this the dogs were nearly too much for us, and Liotir was pressing me earnestly to chop at the ringleader's head, when a man came and called off 'Dragon,' and the others then dispersed. The new-comer wished to know our business, but, without satisfying his curiosity, we rushed to the water-trough, and drank and used in washing an amount of water which he evidently grudged us. Then we were able to tell him that our business was something to eat for Liotir, and a guide to the glaciere; though I trembled when I suggested the latter, for, after all our labours, I had a sort of fear that the cave would prove a myth. On this point the man cleared away all doubts at once,--we could certainly have a guide, as the _patron_ would be sure to let one of them go with us. As to food, there was more doubt, for the master was not yet at home, and his wife would not be able to give us an answer without consulting him. The wife confirmed this statement: they saw very few strangers, and did not profess to supply food to people crossing the plain. I a.s.sured her that we intended to pay well for anything she could let us have, but she merely rejoined that they did not keep an auberge; however, her husband would be home some time in the course of the afternoon--it was now about half-past twelve--and she could ask his opinion on the subject. But Liotir objected that he was meanwhile dying of hunger, and the monsieur of thirst which only milk or cream could a.s.suage; he suggested that some one should be sent to look for the husband, and obtain his permission for us to be fed. To this she a.s.sented, very dubiously, and with a constrained air, as if there were some mysterious reason why the presence of strangers was peculiarly unacceptable on that particular afternoon. At any rate, she said when pressed, she thought there could be no harm in our entering the chalet and sitting down on a bench, where we should be sheltered from the sun.

Here accordingly we sat, more or less patiently, till the master himself appeared. He had no welcome for us; but he was willing that we should eat some of his black bread, and try his wine. Liotir begged for cheese, and the wife was told she might supply cheese of two kinds, and also cream, for the monsieur evidently was _malade_ and could not swallow wine. The cream and the black bread were delicious; but still the horrors of Die hung about me, and I could only dispose of such a small amount, that Liotir waxed funny, and told me it would never do for me to die there, as there was not earth enough to sc.r.a.pe a grave in on the whole plain. Then, being a practical man, he declared he should like to contract for my keep, and thought he could afford to do it at very small cost to me, and still leave a fair margin for himself. He thought it right to make up for my want of appet.i.te; and so, in addition to his own share, he took in an exemplary manner the share of wine which I should have taken, had I been a man like himself. The master of the chalet sat on the family bed, smoking silently and sullenly; and as soon as Liotir had come to an end of his second bottle, he proposed to accompany us himself to the cave, as he doubted whether any of his men knew the way, and he was sure they were all busy. When I came to pay his wife for what we had consumed, I administered thanks as well as money; to which she sternly rejoined, 'Who pays need not give thanks;' and to that surly view she held, in spite of my attempts to soften her down. There was, after all, much force in what she said, under the circ.u.mstances. They had given us no welcome, nothing but mere food, and all they expected in return was a due amount of money; thanks were a mockery in their eyes.

The cavern was reached in a few minutes, when once we got away from the chalet. Two large pits, formed apparently by the subsidence of the surface, lay in a line about east and west, and there proved to be an underground communication between them. From this tunnel, as it were, a long low archway led to a broad slope of chaotic blocks of stone, down which we scrambled by the aid of such light as our candles afforded. The roof of this inner cave was horizontal for some distance, and then suddenly descended in a grand wall; and in consequence of a series of such inverted steps, the cave never a.s.sumed any great height. The whole length of the slope was 190 feet, and its greatest breadth about 140 feet; but the breadth varied very much. Half-way down the slope the ice commenced, fitfully at first, and afterwards in a tolerably continuous sheet. The most careless explorer could not have failed to notice the polygonal figures stamped upon its surface. They were larger and bolder than any I had seen before; and the prismatic nuts into which the ice broke, when cut with the axe, were of course in proportion larger than in the previous caves. The signs of thaw, too, were unmistakeable.

Though the upper surface of the earth had seemed to be utterly devoid of moisture of any kind, large drops fell freely from the roof of the cave,[97] and the ice itself was wet. The _patron_ said there was no ice whatever in the winter months, and that from June to September was the time at which alone it could be found. He declined to explain how it was that we found it so evidently in a state of general thaw in the very height of its season. To give us some idea of the climate of the plain in winter, he informed us that the snow lay for long up to the top of the door of his chalet.

There were in all four columns of ice in the cave, only two of which were of any considerable size. One of these was peculiarly striking from the very large grain which its structure displayed; it measured 19 feet across the base, being flat towards the extremity of the cave, and round towards the entrance. Three thermometers in various parts of the glaciere gave all the same temperature, namely, a fraction under 33 F.: a rough French thermometer gave 1/2 C. The extreme wall of the cavern was completely covered by a layer of stalagmitic material, and some of the forms the substance a.s.sumed were sufficiently striking. In contact with the wall, though standing clear of it in parts where the wall fell inwards, stood a thick round column of the same material, shaped like the ordinary ice-columns of the glacieres, with a cavity near the base, and in all ways following the usual laws of such columns. Considering that I had observed a layer of limestone-paste collecting on one of the ice-columns of the Glaciere of La Genolliere, I could not help imagining that this stalagmitic column had been originally moulded on a norm of that description. It had a girth of 12 feet in the part where we were able to pa.s.s the tape round it. Its surface was smooth; but when we drove a hole through this, with much damage to the _pic_ of my axe, we found that the interior was in a crystalline form.

There was, on the whole, very little to be seen in the glaciere. Had it been my first experience of an ice-cave, it would doubtless have seemed very remarkable, as it did to Liotir, who, by the way, had steadily disbelieved the possibility of natural ice in summer except in the glaciers; but as I had now seen so many, several of them much more wonderful than this, I did not care to stay longer than was absolutely necessary for measurements and investigation. Besides, the food of Dauphine rather takes the energy and love of adventure out of an unaccustomed visitor.

Without long delay, then, we bade farewell to the _patron_, not returning to the inhospitable chalet, and started on our way for Die, each carrying a large block of ice slung in a network of string.

Liotir's purpose was to convince some mysterious female friend that he really had seen ice in summer, within five or six hours of Die; and mine, to apply the ice to the b.u.t.ter which I had specially ordered the landlady to have ready for me, that so I might be able to get through the night, and leave Die by the diligence the first thing next morning.

It was remarkable how well the ice bore the great heat. For long the bulk of the ma.s.ses we carried seemed scarcely to diminish; and if it had not been for a course of heavy falls as we descended through the brushwood, we should have succeeded in getting a large proportion of it safely to Die. The precision of the prismatic structure also showed itself in a very marked manner; and when we came to a crisis of thirst, which happened at shorter and shorter intervals as the afternoon wore on, we separated the prisms with our fingers from the edges of the ice without any difficulty, and made ourselves more hot and thirsty by eating them.

When we arrived at the farmhouse at the Col de Va.s.sieux, we reaped full benefit from our ice. The wine, which had been hot and heavy and unpalatable in the morning, when we had tried it unmixed, became delightfully refreshing when disguised with an abundance of water and sugar and ice; and Liotir found that contracting for my keep at a low rate would not, after all, secure him the comfortable income he had before calculated. After this refreshment, he became communicative, and told me he had served seven years in the French army, three of which were spent in working on railways. He had fought the Italian campaign, and was full of details of the battle of Solferino, on which occasion his _bataillon_ was led on by the Emperor in person. According to his account, four _bataillons_ were drawn up for the a.s.sault of a tower, and when the first advanced it was swept away to a man. The second met with a like fate, and Liotir was in the third. His officers had all been killed, and a corporal was in command. The Emperor rode up and called to them to advance as far as he advanced. This was about a hundred yards; and then, after halting them for a moment, the Emperor cried, '_Allez, mes enfants! nous ne sommes pas tous perdus!'_ sending the fourth _bataillon_ close upon their heels. In answer to my question, Liotir said, slowly and solemnly, that he did not think the Emperor was under fire; a few dropping shots reached them while he was yet addressing them, but he believed the Emperor Napoleon was not in the fire at Solferino. I took the opportunity of asking whether he was green on that occasion, as Mr. Kinglake believes that he is in times of personal danger; but my companion utterly scouted the idea, and declared that he saw no man through all that day so cool and capable as the Emperor. Pale he undoubtedly was, but that was his habit. Like all other French soldiers with whom I have had much conversation, Liotir complained of the army arrangements in the matter of food; on all other points he was most amiable, but when he spoke of the extortions of the _cantiniere_ he completely lost his temper. At a _cafe_, the soldiers could get their cup for 15 centimes, or 20 with liqueur; whereas the _cantiniere_ charged a franc, and gave them very bad coffee. Wine, too, which would cost them 60 centimes the kilo in the town, was valued at 2 francs by their grasping enemy. He had an idea that English soldiers are allowed to take their whole pay in money, and spend it as they will; whereas the French foot-soldier, according to his account, gets 25 centimes a day in money, and has everything found except coffee. A young trooper at Besancon was very eloquent on this subject. He represented himself as a man of small appet.i.te and a gay spirit; he could well live on very little solid food, and yet he had as much deducted from his pay on that account as anyone in the army--as much, for instance, he groaned, as a certain stout old warrior who was then reposing on a corn-bin. If he could have drawn all his pay in money, and lived on almost nothing for food, he would have had abundance of sous for cards and tobacco; and what a career would that be!

The blocks of ice were by this time becoming rather small; and as we had now once more reached the region of lavender, we cut a large quant.i.ty and wrapped the ice in it, and thus protected it from further thaw. For some time before arriving at the farm where my companion's partner lived, he indulged in praises of the wine which their vineyard produced, and a.s.surances of the safety with which it would perform a journey to England. He urged its excellent _bouquet_, and gave me a card of prices which certainly seemed marvellously reasonable. Finally, he proposed to join me at a bottle of white _muscat_, from the farmer's _cave_, in order that I might have an opportunity of seeing how true was his account of the wine. We seated ourselves accordingly in the farmyard, and drank a bottle of delightful wine at 65 centimes the bottle, clear and sparkling, and with a strong muscat flavour. Liotir combined with it intoxication of a different kind, and showed unmistakeable signs of his determination to take another member of the farmer's household into partnership,--the mysterious friend, in fact, for whose astonishment the ice was intended. The white muscat, they told me, would not keep over the year; but they had a wine at the same price which they highly recommended, and warranted to keep for a considerable number of years.

Liotir was very anxious that we should have a bottle of this, for he was confident that I should give them an order if I once tasted it; but we had been in at the death of so many bottles that day, that I declined to try the _muscat rosat_. I have since had a hundred _litres_ sent over by Liotir, and find it very satisfactory. It has a rich, clear, port-wine colour, sparkling, and with the true _frontignac_ flavour.

The effect of the wine on Liotir was peculiar. In the earlier part of the walk, he had never seen Algeria; but after half a bottle of muscat, he had spent six months in that country, and he enlivened the remainder of the way with many details of his experiences there. We reached Die about half-past seven, and the arrival of real ice was hailed as a marvel. Although I had been sent off so unhesitatingly by the landlord in the morning, it seemed that they none of them knew what a glaciere meant. They had determined that we should never reach the _Foire de Fondeurle_, and that if we did, we should find nothing there to repay our toil. As I sat at an open window afterwards, Liotir's voice was to be heard holding forth in a neighbouring cafe upon the wonders of the day; and among the crowd which is a normal condition of the evening streets of Die, the words _Fondeurle_, _Va.s.sieux_, _Anglais_, _glace_, &c., showed what the general subject of conversation was.

The landlady had obeyed orders, and was provided with b.u.t.ter and bread.

The tea was served in an open earthenware pitcher, with the spout at right angles with the handle. There was no cup; but the woman remarked that if monsieur was particular about that, he could turn out the sugar and use the basin, which he did. The milk had a basin to itself; but it had offered so large and tempting a surface to the flies of the town, that it remained untouched. The knife and spoon were imbued with ineradicable garlic, and my own trusty clasp-knife was the only weapon I could use for all table purposes. If it had not been for the ice and the lavender, I think I should never have got away from Die. The former made it possible to eat some bread-and-b.u.t.ter; and of the latter I made a sort of respirator for nose and mouth, which modified the odour of c.o.c.ks and hens prevailing in the house.

Next morning the diligence was to start early, and, in preparation for the six hours' drive, I ordered two eggs to be boiled for breakfast. As the first proved to have been boiled in tepid water, I requested the landlady to boil the second afresh, which she did in a manner that may partly account for the observed fact that the very eggs of some towns taste of garlic. There was household soup simmering on the fire, reeking with onion and garlic, and many other abominations; and, as if it was quite the right and usual thing to do, she slipped the unfortunate egg into this, and left it there to be cooked. After all, garlic must be cheap as an article of food, for the whole bill amounted only to 7-1/2 francs.

This was the last glaciere on my list. It was quite as well that such was the case; for the trials of Dauphine had been too great, and I should scarcely have been inclined to face further adventures of a like kind.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 82: T. x.x.x. p. 157.]

[Footnote 83: Vol. ii. p. 80.]

[Footnote 84: Jean de Choul, _De varia Quercus Historia_, 1555.]

[Footnote 85: Gollut, Mem. des Bourg. de la Franche Comte, p. 227.]

[Footnote 86: Paradin de Cuyseaulx, Annales de Bourgougne, 1566, p. 14.]

[Footnote 87: Several churches in Vienne are used as foundries and workshops. S. Peter's church was an iron-foundry four or five years ago, and is in future to be a museum--a considerable improvement upon its former use. The grand old church of S. John in Dijon has been rescued from the hands which made it a depot of flour, and is being restored to its original purposes: but such instances are very rare.]

[Footnote 88: This family took its rise in Dauphine, before the district had that name: the chief place of the family was the chateau of Beaumont, near Gren.o.ble.]

[Footnote 89: The final victory was near Aquae s.e.xtiae (Aix).]

[Footnote 90: The cultivation of the silkworm mulberry will probably die out before very long. The silk crop has lately failed in Dauphine, and a commission for enquiring into the relative merits of different worms has determined that the Senegal worm produces 633 millegrammes of silk, while the worm, fed on the mulberry produces only 290. The first mulberry trees in France were planted in that part of Provence which is enclosed by Dauphine.

The Bishop of Nismes has lately issued a pastoral letter, commanding prayers to be offered up for the cessation of the malady affecting the silkworms in his own and the surrounding dioceses.]

[Footnote 91: The feudal buildings were razed by order of Richelieu, but the tower remains a landmark for the valley. Three hundred _detenus_ were confined here after the _coup d'etat_ of December 2, 1851.]

[Footnote 92: The origin of the name Dauphin seems to be lost in obscurity, though of comparatively recent date. The Counts d'Albon took the t.i.tle first in 1140, and their estates were not called the Terra Dalphini, or Dalphinatus, till 1291. The first Dauphins bore a castle, not a dolphin.]

[Footnote 93: The old historian Gollut speaks of the _clairets_ and _clerets_ as red wines.]

[Footnote 94: The 'Times' of Oct. 4, 1864, stated that almost no raw silk was offered at the last markets at Valence and Romans, and but for foreign supplies the mills must have been closed. The small amount that was offered sold at from 68 to 72 francs the kilogramme, while foreign coc.o.o.ns from Calamata fetched only 22 francs at Ma.r.s.eilles.]

[Footnote 95: Pausanias says that silkworms are apt to die of indigestion, the coc.o.o.ns lying heavy on the stomach.]

[Footnote 96: T. x.x.xv. pp. 244, &c.]

[Footnote 97: M. de Thury calculated that the thickness of the roof at the lower part of the cave was about 60 feet of rock. He also noticed the peculiar structure of the ice, which afforded great surprise to his party. It was discovered by means of the coloured rays which were thrown into the different parts of the cave, when some one had casually placed a torch in a cavity in one of the columns.]

CHAPTER XV.

OTHER ICE CAVES.

_The Cave of Szelicze, or Szilitze, in Hungary_.[98]

Matthew Bell, the historian of Hungary, sent an account of this cavern to England, in the middle of the last century, which was printed in the original Latin in the 'Philosophical Transactions' of 1739-40 (pp. 41, &c.).

This account states that the cave is in the county of Thorn,[99] among the lowest spurs of the Carpathians. The entrance, which faces the north, and is exposed to the cold winds from the snowy part of the Carpathian range, is 18 fathoms high and 9 broad; and the cave spreads out laterally, and descends to a point 50 fathoms below the entrance, where it is 26 fathoms in breadth, and of irregular height. Beyond this no one had at that time penetrated, on account of the unsafe footing, although many distant echoes were returned by the farther recesses of the cave; indeed, to get even so far as this, much step-cutting was necessary.

When the external frost of winter comes on, the account proceeds, the effect in the cave is the same as if fires had been lighted there: the ice melts, and swarms of flies and bats and hares take refuge in the interior from the severity of the winter. As soon as spring arrives, the warmth of winter disappears from the interior, water exudes from the roof and is converted into ice, while the more abundant supplies which pour down on to the sandy floor are speedily frozen there. In the Dog-days, the frost is so intense that a small icicle becomes in one day a huge ma.s.s of ice; but a cool day promptly brings a thaw, and the cave is looked upon as a barometer, not merely feeling, but also presaging, the changes of weather. The people of the neighbourhood, when employed in field-work, arrange their labour so that the mid-day meal may be taken near the cave, when they either ice the water they have brought with them, or drink the melted ice, which they consider very good for the stomach. It had been calculated that 600 weekly carts would not be sufficient to keep the cavern free from ice. The ground above the cave is peculiarly rich in gra.s.s.

In explanation of these phenomena, Bell threw out the following suggestions, which need no comment. The earth being of itself cold and damp, the external heat of the atmosphere, by partially penetrating into the ground, drives in this native cold to the inner parts of the earth, and makes the cold there more dense. On the other hand, when the external air is cold, it draws forth towards the surface the heat there may be in the inner part of the earth, and thus makes caverns warm. In support and ill.u.s.tration of this view, he states that in the hotter parts of Hungary, when the people wish to cool their wine, they dig a hole 2 feet deep, and place in it the flagon of wine, and, after filling up the hole again, light a blazing fire upon the surface, which cools the wine as if the flagon had been laid in ice. He also suggests that possibly the cold winds from the Carpathians bring with them imperceptible particles of snow, which reach the water of the cave, and convert it into ice. Further, the rocks of the Carpathians abound in salts, nitre, alum, &c., which may, perhaps, mingle with such snowy particles, and produce the ordinary effect of the snow and salt in the artificial production of ice.