Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland Part 12

Townson[100] visited this cave half a century later, and concluded that Bell was in error with regard to the supposed winter thaw and summer frost, although he himself received information at Kaschau which corroborated the earlier account. He describes the approach to the village of Szilitze as leading by a by-road through a pleasant country of woods and hills, with much pasture-land, the cave lying a mile beyond the village, and displaying an entrance 100 feet broad, and 20 or 30 feet high, turned towards the north. The descent of the floor of the cave is rapid, and was covered with thin ice, at the time of his visit, for the last third of the way: from the roof at the farther end, where the cave is not so high as at the entrance, a congeries of icicles was seen to hang; and in a corner on the right, completely sheltered from the rays of the sun, there was a large ma.s.s of the same material. It was a fine forenoon in July, and all was in a state of thaw, the icicles dropping water, and the floor of ice covered with a thin layer of water; while the thermometer in all parts of the cave stood at zero of Reaumur's scale. The rock is compact unstratified limestone, in which so many of the famous caverns of the world are found.

_The Cave of Yeermalik, in Koondooz_[101]

In the year 1840, Captain Burslem, of the 13th Light Infantry, made an expedition from Cabul to the North-west, accompanied by Lieutenant Sturt of the Bengal Engineers, who was afterwards killed in the terrible pa.s.s where Lady Sale, whose daughter he had married, was shot through the arm.

After crossing the high and wild pa.s.s of Karakotul (10,500 feet), these travellers reached the romantic glen of the Doaub, which lies at the foot of the pa.s.s, and is surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains.

Here they were hospitably entertained by Shah Pursund Khan, the chief of the small territory, and their curiosity was roused by the account given by an old moollah of a cavern seven miles off, which the Shah strongly advised them not to attempt to visit, for the Sheitan (the devil), whose ordinary place of abode it was, never allowed a stranger to return from its recesses. The moollah, however, scouted this idea, on the ground that it was much too cold for such an inhabitant; and the Shah eventually agreed to accompany them to the cave with a band of his followers.

As they rode through long and rich gra.s.s, following the course of a gentle stream, and tormented by swarms of forest flies, or blood-suckers, the Shah informed them that he had once endeavoured to explore the cave, and had already penetrated to a considerable distance, when he came upon the fresh prints of a naked foot, with an extraordinary impression by their side, which he suspected to be the foot of Sheitan himself, and so he beat a precipitate retreat. The moollah told them that there was a large number of skeletons in the cave, the remains of 700 men who took refuge there during the invasion of Genghis Khan, with their wives and families, and defended themselves so stoutly, that, after trying in vain the means by which the M'Leods were destroyed in barbarous times, and the opponents of French progress in Algeria in times less remote, the invader built them in with huge natural blocks of stone, and left them to die of hunger.

The entrance is half-way up a hill, and is 50 feet high, with about the same breadth. Not far from the entrance they found a pa.s.sage between two jagged rocks, possibly the remains of Genghis Khan's fatal wall, so narrow that they had some difficulty in squeezing through; and then, before long, came to a drop of 16 feet, down which they were lowered by ropes made from the cotton turbans of the Shah and his attendants. Here they left two men to haul them up on their return, and bade farewell to the light of day. The narrow path led by the edge of a black abyss, sometimes over a flooring of smooth ice for a few feet, and widened gradually till they reached a damp and dripping hall, of dimensions so vast that the light of their torches did not enable them to form a conception of its size. In this hall they found hundreds of skeletons in a perfectly undisturbed state, one, for instance, still holding the skeletons of two infants in its bony arms, while some of the bodies had been preserved, and lay shrivelled like those at the Great St. Bernard.

They were very much startled here by the discovery of the prints of a naked human foot, and by its side the distinct mark of the pointed heel of an Affghan boot,[102] precisely what had so thoroughly frightened the Shah twelve years before. The prints retained all the sharpness of outline which marks a recent impression, and led towards the farther recesses of the cave; but the Englishmen were called away from their investigation by the announcement that if they did not make haste, there would not be oil enough for lighting them to the ice-caves.

Proceeding through several low arches and smaller caves, they reached at length a vast hall, in the centre of which was[103] an enormous ma.s.s of clear ice, smooth and polished as a mirror, and in the form of a gigantic beehive, with its dome-shaped top just touching the long icicles which depended from the jagged surface of the rock. A small aperture led to the interior of this wonderful congelation, the walls of which were nearly 2 feet thick; the floor, sides, and roof were smooth and slippery, and their figures were reflected from floor to ceiling and from side to side in endless repet.i.tion. The inside of this chilly abode was divided into several compartments of every fantastic shape: in some the glittering icicles hung like curtains from the roof; in others, the vault was smooth as gla.s.s. Beautifully brilliant were the prismatic colours reflected from the varied surface of the ice, when the torches flashed suddenly upon them as they pa.s.sed from cave to cave. Around, above, beneath, everything was of solid ice, and being unable to stand on account of its slippery nature, they slid, or rather glided, mysteriously along the gla.s.sy surface of this hall of spells. In one of the largest compartments the icicles had reached the floor, and gave the idea of pillars supporting the roof.

The cavern in which this marvellous ma.s.s of ice stood, branched off into numerous galleries, one of which led the party to a sloping platform of rapidly increasing steepness, where they were startled by the reappearance of the naked foot-prints, pa.s.sing down the slope. The toes were spread out in a manner which showed that they belonged to some one who had been in the habit of going barefoot, and Captain Burslem took a torch and determined to trace the steps: a large stone, however, gave way under his weight; and this, sliding down at first, and then rolling and bounding on for ever, raised such a tumult of noise and echoes that the natives with one accord cried 'Sheitan! Sheitan!' and fled precipitately, extinguishing all the lights in their fear; so that but for Sturt's torch the whole party must have been lost in the darkness.

Shah Pursund Khan at once called a retreat, vowing that it was of no use to attempt to follow the footsteps, as it was well known that the cave extended to Cabul! The guides had now lost their small allowance of pluck, and wandered about despairingly for a long time before they could find their way back to the ice-cave, and thence to the foot of the rock where the two men and the turban-ladders had been left. As soon as they came in sight of this, their comrades above cried out to them that they must make all haste, for Sheitan himself had appeared an hour before, running along the ledge where they now were, and finally vanishing into the gloom beyond; an announcement which of course produced a stampede in the terrified party of natives. Five or six rushed to the spot where the turbans hung, and only an opportune fall of stones from above prevented their destroying the apparatus in their blind hurry to escape. The chief claimed the privilege of being drawn up first, and he and all his followers declared that nothing should ever tempt them to visit again the Cave of Yeermalik.[104]

_The Surtsh.e.l.lir, in Iceland_.

The first account of this lava-cavern is given by Olafsen,[105] who visited it in 1750 and 1753. Ebenezer Henderson[106] explored it in 1815, and Captain Forbes gives some account of it in his recent book on Iceland.[107] It is mentioned in some of the Sagas,[108] and appears to have been a refuge for robbers in the tenth century, and Sturla Sigvatson, with a large band of followers, spent some time here. The Landnama Saga derives the name Surtsh.e.l.lir from a huge giant called Surtur, who made his abode in the cave; but Olafsen believed that the name merely meant _black hole_, from _surtur_ or _svartur_, and was due to the darkness of the cave and the colour of the lava: in accordance with this view, it is called _h.e.l.lerin Sortur_, or _black hole_, in some of the earlier writings. The common people are convinced that it is inhabited by ghosts; and Olafsen and his party were a.s.sured that they would be turned back by horrible noises, or else killed outright by the spirits of the cave: at any rate, their informants declared they would no more reach the inner parts of the cavern than they had reached the traditional green valley of Aradal, isolated in the midst of glaciers, with its wild population of descendants of the giants, which they had endeavoured to find some time before.[109]

The cave is in the form of a tunnel a mile or more in length, with innumerable ramifications, in the lava which has flowed from the Bald Yokul. It lies on the edge of the uninhabited waste called the Arnavatns-heidi, in a district described by Captain Forbes as distorted and devilish, a cast-iron sea of lava. The approach is through an open chasm, 20 to 40 feet in depth, and 50 feet broad, leading to the entrance of the cave, where the height is between 30 and 40 feet, and the breadth rather more than 50. Henderson found a large quant.i.ty of congealed snow at this entrance, and along pool of water resting on a floor of ice, which turned his party back and forced them to seek another entrance, where again they found snow piled up to a considerable height. Olafsen also mentions collections of snow under the various openings in the lava which forms the roof of the cave. The latter explorer discovered interesting signs of the early inhabitants of the Surtsh.e.l.lir, as, for instance, the common bedstead, built of stones, 2-1/2 feet high, 36 feet long, and 14 feet broad, with a pathway down the middle, forming the only pa.s.sage to the inner parts of the cave. The s.p.a.ces enclosed by these stones were strewn with black sand, on which rough wool was probably laid by way of mattress. This could scarcely have been a bedstead in the time of the giants, for a total breadth of 14 feet, deducting for the pathway down the middle, will not give more than 6 feet for the layer of men on either side, unless indeed they lay parallel to the pa.s.sage, and required a length of 36 feet. He also found an old wall, built with blocks of lava across one part of the cave, as if for defence, and a large circular heap of the bones of sheep and oxen, presumably the remains of many years of feasting. Captain Forbes scoffs at these bones, and suggests errant wild ponies as the depositors thereof.

Olafsen had found in his earlier visit that the way was stopped, far in the recesses of the cave, by a lake of water, which filled the tunnel to a depth of 3 feet or more, lying on ice; but in 1753 there was not more than a foot of water, through which they waded without much difficulty. The air soon became exceedingly cold and thick, and for some hundreds of paces they saw no light of day, till at length they reached a welcome opening in the roof. Beyond this, the air grew colder and more thick, and the walls were found to be sheeted with ice from roof to floor, or covered with broad and connected icicles. The ground also was a ma.s.s of ice, but an inch or two of fine brown earth lay upon it, which enabled them to keep their footing. This earth appeared to have been brought down by the water which filtered through the roof. 'The most wonderful thing,' Olafsen remarks, 'that we noticed here, was, that the stalact.i.tes of ice were set with regular figures of five and seven sides, joined together, and resembling those seen on the second stomach of ruminating animals. The condensed cold of the air must have imparted these figures to the ice; they were not external (merely?), but in the ice itself, which otherwise was clear and transparent.'

Henderson and his party appear to have had much more wading to do than Olafsen, walking in one instance through a long tract of water up to the knees. In the deeper recesses of the cave, apparently in the part where the earlier explorers had found the reticulated ice, they found the whole floor of the pa.s.sage covered with thick ice, with so steep a dip that they sat down and slid forward by their own weight--a most undignified proceeding for a grave gentleman on a mission from the Bible Society. On holding their torches close to the floor, they saw down to a depth of 7 or 8 feet, the ice being as clear as crystal. 'The roof and sides of the cave were decorated with most superb icicles, crystallised in every possible form, many of which rivalled in minuteness the finest zeolites; while from the icy floor rose pillars of the same substance, a.s.suming all the curious and phantastic shapes imaginable, mocking the proudest specimens of art, and counterfeiting many well-known objects of animated nature. Many of them were upwards of 4 feet high, generally sharpened at the extremity, and about 2 feet in thickness. A more brilliant scene perhaps never presented itself to the human eye, nor was it easy for us to divest ourselves of the idea that we actually beheld one of the fairy scenes depicted in Eastern fable. The light of the torches rendered it peculiarly enchanting.'

Captain Forbes found much ice on the floor, but he did not enjoy the cold and wet, and seems to have ascended by the last opening in the roof, mentioned by Olafsen, before reaching the cavern where the more beautiful parts of the ice-decoration were found by his predecessors.

The two engravings of the interior of the cave given in his book are copied from the magnificent lithographs of Paul Gaimard,[110] but much of the effect has been lost in the process of copying.

Mr. Baring Gould mentions this cavern in his book on Iceland, and believes that its interest has been much overrated. He seems to have visited the cave, but makes no allusion to the existence of ice.[111]

Mr. E.T. Holland visited the Surtsh.e.l.lir in the course of his tour in Iceland, in 1861, and an account of his visit is given in the first volume of 'Peaks, Pa.s.ses, and Glaciers.'[112] After following in Olafsen's steps for some time, the party reached a cave whose floor was composed of very clear ice, apparently of great thickness, for they could not see the lava beneath it. The walking on this smooth ice-floor Mr. Holland describes as being delightful, the whole sloping considerably downwards. 'In five minutes,' he continues, 'we reached the most beautiful fairy grotto imaginable. From the crystal floor of ice rose up group after group of transparent icy pillars, while from the glittering roof most brilliant icy pendants hung down to meet them.

Columns and arches of ice were ranged along the crystalline walls ... I never saw a more brilliant scene; and indeed it would be difficult to imagine anything more fairy-like. The pillars were many of them of great size, tapering to a point as they rose. The largest were at least 8 feet high, and 6 feet in circ.u.mference at their base. The stalact.i.tes were on an equally grand scale. Through this lovely ice-grotto we walked for nearly ten minutes.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: ICE-CAVE IN THE SURTSh.e.l.lIR.]

The temperature of the caves, Mr. Holland states in a note, was from 8 to 10 C. (464 to 50 F.), that of the air outside being 536 F.

_The Gypsum Cave of Illetzkaya-Zastchita, in the Steppes of the Kirghis, South of Orenburg_.

The district in which this cavern occurs is a small green oasis on the undulating steppe, lying on a vast bed of rock-salt, which extends over an area of two versts in length, and a mile in breadth, with a thickness of more than 100 feet. When the thin cover of red sand and marl is removed, the white salt is exposed, and is found to be so free from all stain, or admixture of other material, excepting sometimes minute filaments of gypsum, that it is pounded at once for use, without any cleansing or recrystallising process.

In the immediate neighbourhood of Illetzkaya-Zastchita there are two or three gypseous hillocks, and a cavern in one of these is used by the inhabitants as a cellar, having been artificially enlarged for that purpose. Sir Roderick Murchison and his colleagues visited this cavern on a hot day in August, with the thermometer at 90 in the shade, in the course of their travels under the patronage of the late Emperor of Russia.[113] They found the hillock to be an irregular cone 150 feet in height; the entrance was by a frail door, on a level with the village street, and fully exposed to the rays of the sun; and yet, when the door was opened, so piercing a current of cold air poured forth, that they were glad to beat a retreat for a while; and on eventually exploring farther, they found the qua.s.s and provisions, stored in the cave, half-frozen within three or four paces of the door. The chasm soon opened out into a natural vault from 12 to 15 feet high, 10 or 12 paces long, and 7 or 8 in width, which seemed to have numerous small ramifications into the impending mound of gypsum and marl. The roof of this inner cavern was hung with undripping solid icicles, and the floor was a conglomerate of ice and frozen earth. They were a.s.sured that the cold is always greatest within when the external air is hottest and driest, and that the ice gradually disappears as winter approaches, and vanishes when the snow comes. The peasants were unanimous in these statements, and a.s.serted that they could sleep in the cave without sheepskins in the depth of winter.

Sir Roderick Murchison and his friends were at first inclined to explain these phenomena by supposing that the chief fissure communicated with some surface of rock-salt, 'the saliferous vapours of which might be so rapidly evaporated or changed in escaping to an intensely hot and dry atmosphere as to produce ice and snow.' But Sir John Herschel, to whom they applied for a.s.sistance, rejected the evaporation theory, and suggested that the external summer wave of heat might possibly only reach the cave at Christmas, being delayed six months in its pa.s.sage through the rock; the cold of winter, in the same manner, arriving at midsummer. To this the explorers objected, that the mound contained many caves, but' only in this particular fissure was any ice found. Dr.

Robinson, astronomer at Armagh, endeavoured to explain the matter by referring to De Saussure's explanation of the phenomena of _cold caves_ in Italy and elsewhere; but this, too, was considered unsatisfactory. At length, Professor Wheatstone referred them to the memoir by Professor Pictet, in the _Bibliotheque Universelle_ of Geneva, where that _savant_ improves upon De Saussure's theory, and applies it in its new form to the case of caves containing permanent ice, in tracts whose mean cold is above the freezing point. This they seem to have accepted, adding that the climatological circ.u.mstances of Orenburg--a wet spring, caused by the melting of the abundant snows, followed by a summer of intense and dry Asiatic heat--must be particularly favourable for the working out of the theory, and must also act powerfully in producing the refrigerating effects of evaporation.[114]

The traveller Pallas visited Illetzkaya in July 1769, and describes this gypseous hillock.[115] In his time the entrance by the side of the hill was unknown, as also was the existence of ice in the cavern.

He saw at the top of the Kraoul-na-Gora, or Watch-mountain, as it was called, a fissure which had once formed a large cavern, into which the Kirghis were in the habit of throwing furs and other materials as religious offerings. Although the cave had since fallen in, they still kept up a part of the ceremony, marching solemnly round the base of the hill once a year, and bathing in the neighbouring water. In earlier times, a man had descended through the fissure by means of cords, and found the cold within insupportable, having very probably reached the present ice-cave.

Pallas describes many caves in various parts of Russia, but never seems to hint at the existence of ice in them, though he specially mentions their extreme cold. Some of these occurred in gypsum, and some in limestone; and the gypseous caves showed universally a very low temperature, though still far above the freezing-point.[116] Thus in the dark cavern of Barnoukova,[117] on the Piana, in a rock of gypsum, while the thermometer in the shade stood at 75.2, the temperatures at various points in the cave were,--at the entrance 59.36, 25 feet from the entrance 46.4, and in the coldest part 42.8. This cold he describes as insupportable. The temperature of the water which had acc.u.mulated in the coldest parts of the cave was 48.8, considerably higher than the surrounding atmosphere; from which Pallas concluded that the cold of gypsum-caves is due to the acid vapours which are generally observed in grottoes of this description.

In May 1770, he found snow on the sloping entrance to the cavern of Loekle, in the neighbourhood of the Oufa; but the air of the interior was not colder than was to be expected in a deep cave.

Sir R. Murchison wrote to Russia for further information with respect to this cave in January 1865, and again in the beginning of April, addressing his second enquiry to the Secretary of the Imperial Academy.

In reply, the Secretary says that he is not aware that any thermometric observations have been made in the cavern. He encloses a short statement by M. Helmersen, one of the members of the Academy, to the following effect:--About 50 versts SE. of Miask, in the chain of the Ural, is a copper mine, called Kirobinskoy, which was abandoned more than fifty years ago. On the 7th July, 1826, M. Helmersen found a thick wainscoting of ice on the sides and roof and floor of the horizontal gallery, within 10 feet of the entrance. He was a.s.sured that this ice never melts, and that its thickness is greater in summer than in winter. M. Helmersen adds, that to the best of his belief no one has investigated the cavern of Illetzkaya Zastchita since Sir R. Murchison's visit.

_The Ice-Cavern of the Peak of Teneriffe_.[118]

This cave is at a height of 11,040 feet above the sea, and is therefore not far below the snow-line of the lat.i.tudes of the Canary Isles. The entrance is by a hole 3 or 4 feet square, in the roof of the cave, which may be about 20 feet from the floor. The peasants who convey snow and ice from the cave to the lower regions, enter by means of knotted ropes; but Professor Smyth had caused his ship's carpenter to prepare a stout ladder, by which photographic instruments and a lady were taken down.

On alighting on a heap of stones at the bottom, the party found themselves surrounded by a sloping wall of snow, 3 feet high, and 7 or 8 feet broad, the basin in which they stood being formed in the snow by the vertical rays of the sun, and by the dropping of water from the edges of the hole[119]. Beyond this ring-fence, large surfaces of water stretched away into the farther recesses of the cave, resting on a layer of ice, which appeared to be generally about 2 feet thick. At one of the deeper ends of the cave, water dropped continually from the crevices of the roof; a fact which Professor Smyth attributed to the slow advance of the summer wave of heat through the superinc.u.mbent rock, which was only now reaching the inner recesses of the loose lava, and liquefying the results of the past winter. There would seem to be immense infiltration of meteoric water on the Peak; for, notwithstanding the great depth of rain which falls annually in a liquid or congealed form, the sides of the mountain are not scored with the lines of water-torrents.

Though occurring in lava, this cavern is quite different from lava-tunnels, such as the Surtsh.e.l.lir, which are recognised formations, produced by the cooling of the terminal surface-crust of the stream of lava, and the subsequent bursting forth of the molten stream within.

This, on the contrary, proved to be a smooth dome-shaped cave, running off into three contracting lobes or tunnels which might be respectively 70, 50, and 40 feet long, and were all filled to a certain depth with water: in the smoothness of the interior surfaces, Professor Smyth believed that he detected the action of highly elastic gases on a plastic material.

The astronomer takes exception to the term 'underground glacier'[120]

which had been applied to this cavern. He represents that the mountain is abundantly covered each winter with snow, in the neighbourhood of the ice-cave, which is nearly within the snow-line, and the stores of snow thus acc.u.mulated in the cave have no great difficulty in resisting the effects of summer heat, since all radiation is cut off by the roof of rocks. The importance of this protection may be understood from the fact that in the middle of July the thermometer at this alt.i.tude gave 130 in the sun, but fell to 47 when relieved from the heat due to radiation.

At the time of this observation, there were still patches of snow lying on the mountain-side, exposed to the full power of direct radiation; and, therefore, there is not anything very surprising in the permanence of snow under such favourable circ.u.mstances as are developed in the cave. Mr. Airy, a few summers ago, found the rooms of the Casa Inglese, on Mount Etna, half filled with snow, which had drifted in by an open door, and had been preserved from solar radiation by the thick roof.[121]

Humboldt remarks, that the mean temperature of the region in which the Cueva del Hielo (ice-cave) occurs, is not below 3 C. (37.4 F.), but so much snow and ice are stored up in the winter that the utmost efforts of the summer heat cannot melt it all. He adds, that the existence of permanent snow in holes or caves must depend more upon the amount of winter snow, and the freedom from hot winds, than on the absolute elevation of the locality.

The natives of Teneriffe are men of faith. They have large belief in the existence and intercommunication of numerous vast caverns in the Peak, one of which, on the north coast, is said to communicate with the ice-cavern, notwithstanding 8 miles of horizontal distance, and 11,000 feet of vertical depth. The truth of this particular article of their creed has been recently tested by several worthy and reverend hidalgos, who drove a dog into the entrance of the cavern on the sea-coast, in the belief that he would eventually come to light again in the ice-cave: he was accordingly found lying there some days after, greatly fatigued and emaciated, having in the interval accomplished the 11,000 feet of subterranean climbing. How he could enter, from below, a water-logged cave, does not appear to have been explained.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 98: The _Caves of Szelicze_ are mentioned in Murray's _Handbook of Southern Germany_ (1858, p. 555), where the following account is given of them:--'During the winter a great quant.i.ty of ice acc.u.mulates in these caves, which is not entirely melted before the commencement of the ensuing winter. In the summer months they are consequently filled with vast ma.s.ses of ice broken up into a thousand fantastic forms, and presenting by their lucidity a singular contrast to the sombre vaults and ma.s.sive stalact.i.tes of the cavern.'

The _Drachenhohle_ (Murray, 1. c.p. 553), a series of caverns not far from Neusohl in Hungary, afford another instance of an ice-cave, one of the largest of them being said to be coated with a sheet of translucid ice, through which the stalact.i.tic fretwork of the vault is seen to great advantage.]

[Footnote 99: Not far from Kaschau.]

[Footnote 100: _Travels in Hungary_, 1797, pp. 317, &c.]

[Footnote 101: _A Peep into Toorkistan_; London, 1846; chapters x. and xi.]

[Footnote 102: They were now in a country far removed from the Affghans, and hostile to that people.]

[Footnote 103: The remainder of this paragraph is in Captain Burslem's own words.]

[Footnote 104: I am indebted for the knowledge of the existence of these caves to W.A. Sandford, Esq., F.G.S., who informed me that an account of them was to be found in a book of travels by an English officer. I am not aware that they have been visited on any other occasion than this.]