Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland Part 5

[Footnote 44: There is a painting by Vander Meulen, representing this siege, in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.]

[Footnote 45: The Church of S. Philibert, in Dijon, now a forage magazine, has an inscription let into the wall almost ludicrously out of keeping with the present desecrated state of the building,--_Dilexi Domine Decorem Domus tuae_, 1648.]

[Footnote 46: 'Qu'on les laisse pour grain!']

[Footnote 47: In the year 1648, it was suspected that some decay was going on in the material of this Host, and the following translation from the Latin describes the investigation entered into by the Dean and a large body of clergy and laity, in order to quiet the public mind:--'Apres que tous les susnommes (viz. the Dean, Canons, President of the Parliament, &c.) etant presents eurent adores le S. Sacrement, la custode fut ouverte avec tout le respect possible; et alors le dit Doyen apercut un vermisseau roule en spirale, qu'il saisit avec la pointe d'une epingle et placa sur un corporal ou chacun l'examina; puis on le brula avec un charbon pris dans l'encensoir, et ses cendres furent jetees dans la piscine. On put alors constater tout le dommage que ce miserable pet.i.t animal avait cause aux especes sacrees dont les debris ici tombaient en poussiere, la se trouvaient ronges et laceres, de telle sorte que l'Hostie n'avait presque plus rien de sa forme circulaire, et presentait de profondes decoupures partout ou le vermisseau s'etait livre a ses sinueus es evolutions.']

CHAPTER VII.

THE GLACIeRE OF MONTHeZY, IN THE VAL DE TRAVERS.

I rejoined my sisters at Neufchatel on the 5th of July, and proceeded thence with them by the line which pa.s.ses through the Val de Travers.

One of them had been at Fleurier, in 1860, on the day of the opening of this line, and she added an interest to the various tunnels, by telling us that a Swiss gentleman of her acquaintance, who had taken a place in one of the open carriages of the first train, found, on reaching the daylight after one of the tunnels, that his neighbour had been killed by a small stone which had fallen on to his head. Where the stone came from, no one could say, nor yet when it fell, for the unfortunate man had made no sign or movement of any kind.

Every one must be delighted with the wonders of the line of rail, and the beauties through which the engineer has cut his way. In valleys on a less magnificent scale, cuttings and embankments on the face of the hill are sad eyesores, as in railway-ruined Killiecrankie; but here Nature's works are so very grand, that the works of man are not offensively prominent, being overawed by the very facts over which they have triumphed. When we reached the more even part of the valley, where the Reuse no longer roars and rushes far below, but winds quietly through the soft gra.s.s on a level with the rail, the whole grouping was so exceedingly charming, and the river itself so suggestive of l.u.s.ty trout, and the village of Noiraigue[48] looked so tempting as it nestled in a sheltered nook among the headlong precipices, that I registered in a safe mental pigeon-hole a week at the auberge there with a fishing-rod, and excursions to the commanding summit in which the _Creux de Vent_ is found. The engine-driver knew that he was in a region of beauties, and, when he whistled to warn his pa.s.sengers that the train was about to move on, he remained stationary until the long-resounding echoes died out, floating lingeringly up the valley to neighbouring France.

We had no definite idea as to the _locale_ of the glaciere we were now bent upon attacking. M. Thury's list gave the following information:--'_Glaciere de Motiers, Canton de Neufchatel, entre les vallees de Travers et de la Brevine, pres du sentier de la Brevine_;'

and this I had rendered somewhat more precise by a cross-examination of the guard of the train on my way to Besancon. He had not heard of the glaciere, but from what I told him he was inclined to think that Couvet would be the best station for our purpose, especially as the 'Ecu' at that place was, in his eyes, a commendable hostelry. Some one in Geneva, also, had believed that Couvet was as likely as anything else in the valley; so at Couvet we descended.[49]

This is a very clean and cheerful village, devoted to the lucrative manufacture of _absinthe_, and producing inhabitants who look like gentlemen and ladies, and promenade the ways in bonnets and hats, after a most un-Swiss-like fashion. They carefully restrict themselves to the making of the poisonous product of their village, and have nothing to do with the consumption thereof:[50] hence nature has a fair chance with them, and they are a healthy and energetic race. The beauties of the surrounding mountains, with their fitful alternations of pasture and wood, and grey face of rock, are not marred by the outward appearance, at least, of that which Bishop Heber lamented in a country where 'every prospect pleases.' An old lady is commemorated in the annals of Couvet as an example of the healthiness of the situation, who saw seven generations of her family, having known her great-grandfather in her early years, and living to nurse great-grandchildren in her old age. The landlord of the inn informed us, with much pride, that Couvet was the birthplace of the man who invented a clock for telling the time at sea; by which, no doubt, he meant the chronometer, invented by M. Berthoud. At Motiers, the next village, Rousseau wrote his _Lettres de la Montagne_, and thence it was that he fled from popular violence to the island on the Lake of Bienne.

The 'Ecu' promised us dinner in half an hour, and we strolled about in the garden of that unsophisticated hotel for an hour and a half, reconciled to the delay by the beauty of the neighbouring hills, the winding of the valley giving all the effect of a mountain-locked plain, with barriers decked with firs. It will readily be conceived, however, that three practical English people could not be satisfied to feed on beauty alone for any very great length of time, and we caught the landlady and became peremptory. She explained that dinner was quite ready, but she had intended to give us the pleasure of an agreeable society, consisting of sundry Swiss who were due in another half-hour or so: she yielded, nevertheless, to our representations, and promised to serve the meal at once. We were speedily summoned to the _salle-a-manger,_ and entered a low smoke-stained wooden chamber, with no floor to speak of, and with huge beams supporting the roof, dangerous for tall heads. The date on the door was 1690, and the chamber fully looked its age. There was a long table of the prevailing hue, with a similar bench; and on the table three large basins, presumably containing soup, were ranged, each covered with its plate, and accompanied by a ricketty spoon of yellow metal and a hunch of black bread. A., who was hungry enough and experienced enough to have known better, began promptly a most pathetic 'Why surely!' but the landlady stopped her by opening a side door, and displaying a comfortable room in which a well-appointed table awaited us:--she had taken us through the kitchen rather than through the _salon_, in which were peasants smoking.

We were somewhat disconcerted when we heard that the unwashed-looking place was the kitchen; but the landlady had made up for it by scrubbing her husband, who waited upon us, to a high pitch of presentability, and further experience showed that the 'Ecu' is to be highly commended for the excellence and abundance and cheapness of its foods.

There are many natural curiosities in and near the Val de Travers, which well repay the labour that must be expended upon them. The _Temple des Fees_, on the western side of the Valley of Verrieres, used to be called the most beautiful grotto in Switzerland; and the great Cavern of La Baume, near Motiers, is said to be exceedingly wonderful. We were shown the entrance to a line of caverns in the hills above Couvet, and were informed that it was possible to pierce completely through the range, and pa.s.s out at the other side within sight of Yverdun. One of the caverns in this valley had been explored by some of A. and M.'s Swiss friends, and the account of what they had gone through was by no means inviting, seeing that the prevailing material was damp clay of a solid character, arranged in steep slopes, up which progression must be made by inserting the fingers and toes as far as might be into the clay; and, of course, when the handful of unpleasant mud came away, the result was the reverse of progression. To anyone who has only known the rope up the pure white side of some snow mountain, the idea of being roped for the purpose of grappling with underground banks of adhesive mud and clay must be horrible in the extreme. Another interesting natural phenomenon is presented by the source of the Reuse, that river gushing out from the rock in considerable volume, probably formed by the drainage of the Lake of Etallieres, in the distant valley of La Brevine; while the Longe-aigue, on the contrary, is lost in a gulf of such horror that the people call the mill which stands on its edge the _Moulin d'enfer_.

As usual, we were a.s.sured that many of these remarkable sights were far better worth a visit than the glaciere, of which no one seemed to know anything. A guide was at length secured for the next morning, who had made his way to the cave once in the winter-time and had been unable to enter it, and we settled down quietly to an evening of perfect rest. The windows of the bedrooms being guiltless of blinds and curtains, the effect of waking, in the early morning, to find them blocked up, as it were, by the green slopes of pasture and the dark bands of fir-woods which clothed the limiting hills, seemed almost magical, the foreground being occupied solely by the graceful curve of the dome of the church-tower, glittering with intercepted rays, and forming a bright omen for the day thus ushered in.

In due time the promised guide appeared, a sickly boy of unprepossessing appearance, and of _patois_ to correspond. I was at first tempted to propose that we should attack him stereoscopically, A. administering French and I simultaneous German, in the hope that the combination might convey some meaning to him; but, after a time, we succeeded with French alone. Perhaps Latin would have made a more likely _melange_ than German, and to give it him in three dimensions would not have been a bad plan. The route for the glaciere runs straight up the face of the hill along which the railway has been constructed; and as we pa.s.sed through woods of beech and fir, with fresh green glades rolling down below our feet, or emerged from the woods to cross large undulating expanses of meadow-land, we were almost inclined to believe that we had never done so lovely a walk. The scenery through which we pa.s.sed was thoroughly that of the lower districts of the Alps, with nothing Jurane in its character, and the elevation finally achieved was not very great: indeed, at a short distance from the glaciere, we pa.s.sed a collection of very neat chalets, with gardens and garden-flowers, one of the chalets rejoicing in countless beehives, with three or four 'ekes' apiece. Up to the time of reaching this little village, which seemed to be called Sagnette, our path had been that which leads to _La Brevine_, the highest valley in the canton; but now we turned off abruptly up the steeper face on the left hand, and in a very few minutes came upon a dry wilderness of rock and gra.s.s, which we at once recognised as 'glaciere country;' and when I told our guide that we must be near the place, he replied by pointing to the trees round the mouth of the pit.

Shortly after we first left Couvet, a gaunt elderly female, with a one-bullock char, had joined our party, and tried to bully us into giving up the cave and going instead to a neighbouring summit, whence she promised us a view of unrivalled extent and beauty. She told us that there was nothing to be seen in the glaciere, and that it was a place where people lost their lives. The guide said that was nonsense; but she reduced him to silence by quoting a case in point. She said, too, that if a man slipped and fell, there was nothing to prevent him from going helplessly down a run of ice into a subterranean watercourse, which would carry him for two or three leagues underground; and on this head our boy had no counter-statement to make. She a.s.serted that without ladders it was utterly impossible to make the descent to the commencement of the glaciere; and she vowed there was no ladder now, nor had been for some time. Here the boy came in, stating that the cave belonged to a mademoiselle of Neufchatel, who had a summer cottage at no great distance, and loved to be supplied with ice during her residence in the country, for which purpose she kept a sound ladder on the spot, and had it removed in the winter that it might not be destroyed. There was a circ.u.mstantial air about this statement which for the moment got the better of the old woman; but she speedily recovered herself, and repeated positively that there was no ladder of any description, adding, somewhat inconsequently, that it was such a bad one, no Christian could use it with safety. The boy retorted, that it was all very well for her to run the glaciere down, as she lived near it, but for the world from a distance it was a most wonderful sight; and, as for the ladder, he happened to know that it was at this time in excellent preservation. The event proved that in saying this he drew entirely upon his imagination.

It is, perhaps, only fair to suppose that they don't mean anything by it, and it may be mere ignorance on their part; but the simple fact is, that some of those Swiss rustics tell the most barefaced lies conceivable,--_unblushing_ is an epithet that cannot be safely applied without previous soap and water,--and tell them in a plodding systematic manner which takes in all but the experienced and wary traveller. I have myself learned to suspend my judgment regarding the most simple thing in nature, until I have other grounds for forming an opinion than the solemn a.s.severations of the most stolid and respectable Swiss, if it so be that money depends upon his report.[51]

As in the case of two of the glacieres already described, the entrance is by a deep pit, which has the appearance of having been at one time two pits, one less deep than the other; and the barrier between the two having been removed by some natural process, a pa.s.sage is found down the steep side of the shallower pit, which lands the adventurer on a small sloping shelf, 21 feet sheer above the surface of the snow in the deeper pit, the sides of the latter rising up perpendicularly all round. It is for this last 21 feet that some sort of ladder is absolutely necessary.

Our guide flung himself down in the sun at the outer edge of the pit, and informed us that as it was cold and dangerous down below, he intended to go no farther: he had engaged, he said, to guide us to the glaciere, and he felt in no way bound to go into it. He was not good for much, so I was not sorry to hear of his determination; and when my sisters saw the sort of place they had to try to scramble down, they appeared to be very glad that only I was to be with them.

Leaving them to make such arrangements with regard to dress as might seem necessary to them, I proceeded to pioneer the way down the first part of the descent. This was extremely unpleasant, for the rocks were steep and very moist, with treacherous little collections of disintegrated material on every small ledge where the foot might otherwise have found a hold. These had to be cleared away before it could be safe for them to descend, and in other places the broken rock had to be picked out to form foot-holes; while, lower down, where the final shelf was reached, the abrupt slope of mud which ended in the sheer fall required considerable reduction, being far too beguiling in its original form. Here there was also a b.u.t.tress of damp earth to be got round, and it was necessary to cut out deep holes for the hands and feet before even a man could venture upon the attempt with any comfort. The b.u.t.tress was not, however, without its advantage, for on it, overhanging the snow of the lower pit, was a beautiful clump of cowslips (_Primula elatior_, Fr. _Primevere inodore_), which was at once secured as a trophy. The length of the irregular descent to this point was between 70 and 80 feet. On rounding the b.u.t.tress, the upper end of the ladder presented itself, and now the question, between the boy and the old woman was to be decided. I worked down to the edge of the shelf, and looked over into the pit, and, alas! the state of the remaining parts of the ladder was hopeless, owing partly to the decay of the sidepieces, and partly to the general absence of steps--a somewhat embarra.s.sing feature under the circ.u.mstances. A further investigation showed that for the 21 feet of ladder there were only seven steps, and these seven were not arranged as conveniently as they might have been, for two occurred at the very top, and the other five in a group at the bottom. A branchless fir-tree had at some time fallen into the pit, and now lay in partial contact with the ruined ladder; and there were on the trunk various little k.n.o.bs, which might possibly be of some use as a supplement to the rare steps of the ladder. The snow at the bottom of the pit was surrounded on all sides by perpendicular rock, and on the side opposite to the ladder I saw an arch at the foot of the rock, apparently 2 or 3 feet high, leading from the snow into darkness; and that, of course, was the entrance to the glaciere. I succeeded in getting down the ladder, by help of the supplement, and looked down into the dark hole to see that it was practicable, and then returned to report progress in the upper regions. We had brought no alpenstocks to Couvet, so we sent the guide off into the woods, where we had heard the sound of an axe, to get three stout sticks from the woodmen; but he returned with such wretched, crooked little things, that A. went off herself to forage, and, having found an impromptu cattle-fence, came back with weapons resembling bulbous hedge-stakes, which she skinned and generally modified with a powerful clasp-knife, her constant companion. She then cut up the crooked sticks into _batons_ for a contemplated repair of the ladder, while M. and I investigated the country near the pit. We found two other pits, which afterwards proved to communicate with the glaciere. We could approach sufficiently near to one of these to see down to the bottom, where there was a considerable collection of snow: this pit was completely sheltered from the sun by trees, and was 66 feet deep and 4 or 5 feet in diameter. The other was of larger size, but its edge was so treacherous that we did not venture so near as to see what it contained: its depth was about 70 feet, and the stone and a foot or two of the string came up wet. The sides of the main pit, by which we were to enter the glaciere, were, as has been said, very sheer, and on one side we could approach sufficiently near the edge to drop a plummet down to the snow: the height of this face of rock was 59 feet, measuring down to the snow, and the level of the ice was eventually found to be about 4 feet lower. Although it was now not very far from noon, the sun had not yet reached the snow, owing partly to the depth of the pit as compared with its diameter, and partly to the trees which grew on several sides close to the edge. One or two trees of considerable size grew out of the face of rock.

We were now cool enough to attempt the glaciere, and I commenced the descent with A. The precautions already taken made the way tolerably possible down to the b.u.t.tress of earth and the shelving ledge, and so far the warm sun had accompanied us; but beyond the ledge there was nothing but the broken ladder, and deep shade, and a cold damp atmosphere, which made the idea, and still more the feel, of snow very much the reverse of pleasant. A. was not a coward on such occasions, and she had sufficient confidence in her guide; but it is rather trying for a lady to make the first step off a slippery slope of mud, on to an apology for a ladder which only stands up a few inches above the lower edge of the slope, and so affords no support for the hand: nor, after all, can bravery and trust quite make up for the want of steps. We were a very long time in accomplishing the descent, for her feet were always out of her sight, owing to the shape which female dress a.s.sumes when its wearer goes down a ladder with her face to the front, especially when the ladder has suffered from ubiquitous compound fracture, and the ragged edges catch the unaccustomed petticoats. It was quite as well the feet were out of sight, for some of the supports to which they were guided were not such as would have commended themselves to her, had she been able to see them. At length, owing in great measure to the opportune a.s.sistance of two of the batons we had brought down with us for repairs, thanks also to the trunk of the fir-tree, we reached the snow; and poor A. was planted there, breaking through the top crust as a commencement of her acquaintance with it, till such time as I could bring M. down to join her. The experience acquired in the course of A.'s descent led us to call to M. that she must get rid of that portion of her attire which gives a shape to modern dress; for the obstinacy and power of _mal-a-propos_ obstructiveness of this garment had wonderfully complicated our difficulties. She objected that the guide was there; but we a.s.sured her that he was asleep, or if he wasn't it made no matter; so when I reached the top, she emerged shapeless from a temporary hiding-place, clutching her long hedge-stake, and feeling, she said--and certainly looking--a good deal like a gorilla. The most baffling part of the trouble having been thus got over, we soon joined A., blue already, and shivering on the snow. The sun now reached very nearly to the bottom of the pit, and I went up once more for thermometers and other things, leaving a measure with my sisters, and begging them to amuse themselves by taking the dimensions of the snow: on my return, however, to the top of the ladder, I found them combining over a little bottle, and they informed me plaintively that they had been taking medicinal brandy and snow instead of measurements,--a very necessary precaution, for anyone to whom brandy is not a greater nuisance than utter cold. We found the dimensions of the bottom of the pit, i.e. of the field of snow on which we stood, to be 31-1/2 feet by 21; but we were unable to form any idea of the depth of the snow, beyond the fact that 'up to the ancle' was its prevailing condition. The boy told us, when we rejoined him, that when he and others had attempted to get ice for the landlord, when it was ordered for him in a serious illness the winter before, they had found the pit filled to the top with snow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIeRE OF MONTHeZY, IN THE VAL DE TRAVERS.]

As we stood at the mouth of the low entrance, making final preparations for a plunge into the darkness, I perceived a strong cold current blowing out from the cave--sufficiently strong and cold to render knickerbocker stockings a very unavailing protection. While engaged in the discovery that this style of dress is not without its drawbacks, I found, to my surprise, that the direction of the current suddenly changed, and the cold blast which had before blown out of the cave, now blew almost as strongly in. The arch of entrance was so low, that the top was about on a level with my waist; so that our faces and the upper parts of our bodies were not exposed to the current, and the strangeness of the effect was thus considerably increased. As a matter of curiosity, we lighted a _bougie_, and placed it on the edge of the snow, at the top of the slope of 3 or 4 feet which led down the surface of the ice, and then stood to watch the effect of the current on the flame. The experiment proved that the currents alternated, and, as I fancied, regularly; and in order to determine, if possible, the law of this alternation, I observed with my watch the exact duration of each current. For twenty-two seconds the flame of the _bougie_ was blown away from the entrance, so strongly as to a.s.sume a horizontal position, and almost to leave the wick: then the current ceased, and the flame rose with a stately air to a vertical position, moving down again steadily till it became once more horizontal, but now pointing in towards the cave. This change occupied in all four seconds; and the current inwards lasted--like the outward current--twenty-two seconds, and then the whole phenomenon was repeated. The currents kept such good time, that when I stood beyond their reach, and turned my back, I was enabled to announce each change with perfect precision. On one occasion, the flame performed its semicircle in a horizontal instead of a vertical plane, moving round the wick in the shape of a pea-flower. The day was very still, so that no external winds could have anything to do with this singular alternation; and, indeed, the pit was so completely sheltered by its shape, that a storm might have raged outside without producing any perceptible effect below. It would be difficult to explain the regularity of these opposite currents, but it is not so difficult to see that some such oscillation might be expected. It will be better, however, to defer any suggestions on this point till the glaciere has been more fully described.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROUND PLAN OF THE GLACIeRE OF MONTHeZY. Note: The candle stood at this point.]

We pa.s.sed down at length through the low archway, and stood on the floor of ice. As our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we saw that an indistinct light streamed into the cave from some low point at a considerable distance, apparently on a level with the floor; and this we afterwards found to be the bottom of the larger of the two pits we had already fathomed, the pit A of the diagram; and we eventually discovered a similar but much smaller communication with the bottom of the pit B.

In each of these pits there was a considerable pyramid of snow, whose base was on a level with the floor of the glaciere: the connecting archway in the case of the pit A was 3 or 4 feet high, allowing us to pa.s.s into the pit and round the pyramid with perfect ease, while that leading to the pit B was less than a foot high, so that no pa.s.sage could be forced.

As we stood on the ice at the entrance and peered into the comparative darkness, we saw by degrees that the glaciere consisted of a continuous sea of smooth ice, sloping down very gently towards the right hand. The rock which forms the roof of the cave seemed to be almost as even as the floor, and was from 4 to 5 feet high in the neighbourhood in which we now found ourselves, gradually approaching the floor towards the bottom of the pit B, where it became about a foot high, and rising slightly in that part of the cave where the floor fell, so as to give 9 or 10 feet as the height there. The ice had all the appearance of great depth; but there were no means of forming a trustworthy opinion on this point, beyond the fact that I succeeded in lowering a stone to a considerable depth, in the small crevice which existed between the wall and the block of ice which formed the floor. The greatest length of the cave we found to be 112 ft. 7 in., and its breadth 94 ft., the general shape of the field of ice, which filled it to its utmost edges, being elliptical. The surface was unpleasantly wet, chiefly in the line of the currents, which were now seen to pa.s.s backwards and forwards between the pits A and C.

In the neighbourhood of the pit B the water stood in a very thin sheet on the ice, which there was level, and rendered the style of locomotion necessitated by the near approach of the roof extremely disagreeable, as I was obliged to lie on my face, and push myself along the wet and slippery ice, to explore that corner of the cave, being at length stopped by want of sufficient height for even that method of progression.

The circle marked D represents a column from the roof, at the foot of which we found a small grotto in the ice, which I entered to a depth of 6 feet, the surface of the field of ice showing a very gracefully rounded fall at the edges of the grotto. At the point E there was a beautiful collection of fretted columns, white and hard as porcelain, arranged in a semicircle, with the diameter facing the cave, measuring 22 ft. 9 in. along this face. On the farther side of these columns there were signs of a considerable fall in the ice; and by making use of the roots of small stalagmitic columns of that material, which grew on the slope of ice, I got down into a little wilderness of spires and flutings, and found a small cave penetrating a short way under the solid ice-floor. G marks the place of a free stalagmite of ice, formed under a fissure in the roof; and each F represents a column from the roof, or from a lateral fissure in the wall.

The most striking features of this cave were the three domes, marked H in the ground-plan, in which they ought strictly not to appear, as being confined to the roof: one of them is shown also in the vertical section of the cave. They occur where the roof is from 3 to 4 feet above the floor. It will be understood, that the bent att.i.tude in which we were obliged to investigate these parts of the cave was exceedingly fatiguing, and we hailed with delight a sudden circular opening in the roof which enabled us to stand upright. This delight was immensely increased when our candles showed us that the walls of this vertical opening were profusely decorated with the most lovely forms of ice. The first that we came under pa.s.sed up out of sight; and in this, two solid cascades of ice hung down, high overhead, apparently broken off short, or at any rate ending very abruptly: the others did not pa.s.s so far into the roof, and formed domes of very regular shape. In all three, the details of the ice-decoration were most lovely, and the effect produced by the whole situation was very curious; for we stood with our legs exposed to the alternating cold currents, the remaining part of our bodies being imbedded as it were in the roof; while the candles in our hands brought out the crystal ornaments of the sides, flashing fitfully all round us and overhead, when one or other of us moved a light, as if we had been surrounded by diamonds of every possible size and setting.

One of the domes was so small, that we were obliged to stand up by turn to examine its beauties; but in the others we all stood together. On every side were branching cl.u.s.ters of ice in the form of club-mosses, with here and there varicose veins of clear ice, and pinnacles of the prismatic structure, with limpid crockets and finials. The pipes of ice which formed a network on the walls were in some cases so exquisitely clear, that we could not be sure of their existence without touching them; and in other cases a sheet 4 or 6 inches thick was found to be no obstruction to our view of the rock on which it was formed. In one of the domes we had only one candle, and the bearer of this after a time contrived to let it fall, leaving us standing with our heads in perfect darkness; while the indistinct light which strayed about our feet showed faintly a circle of icicles, hanging from the lower part of the dome, the fringe, as it were, of our rocky petticoats.

In one of the lower parts of the cave, where darkness prevailed, and locomotion was only possible on the lowest reptile principles, M.

announced that she could see clear through the ice-floor, as if there were nothing between her and the rock below. I ventured to doubt this, for there was an air of immense thickness about the whole ice; and as soon as A. and I had succeeded in grovelling across the intervening s.p.a.ce, and converged upon her, we found that the appearance she had observed was due to a most perfect reflection of the roof, as shown by the candles we carried, which may give some idea of the character of the ice. We did not care to study this effect for any very prolonged time, inasmuch as we were obliged meanwhile to stow away the length of our legs on a part of the ice which was thinly covered with water,--one result of its proximity to the arch communicating with the smallest pit.

It has been said that the whole ice-floor sloped slightly towards one side of the cave, the slope becoming rather more steep near the edge.[52]

Clearly, ever so slight a slope would be sufficiently embarra.s.sing, when the surface was so perfectly smooth and slippery; and this added much to the difficulty of walking in a bent att.i.tude. On coming out of one of the domes, I tried progression on all-fours--threes, rather, for the candle occupied one hand,--and I cannot recommend that method, owing to the impossibility of putting on the break. The pace ultimately acquired is greater than is pleasant, and the roof is too near the floor to allow of any successful attempt to bring things to an end by the rea.s.sumption of a biped character.

We placed a thermometer in the line of greatest current, and another in a still part of the cave. The memorandum is lost of their register--if, indeed, we ever made one, for we were more concerned with the beauties than the temperature was surprisingly high in the line of current, as compared with the ordinary temperature of ice-caves.

When we came to compare backs, after leaving the cave, we mutually found that they were in a very disreputable condition. The damp and ragged roof with which they had been so frequently in contact had produced a marked effect upon them, and I eventually paid a tailor in Geneva three francs for restoring my coat to decency. M. took great credit to herself for having been more careful of her back than the others, and declined to be laughed at for forgetting that she was only about half as high as they, to begin with. A. still remembers the green-grey stains, as the most obstinate she ever had to deal with, especially as her three-days'

knapsack contained no change for that outer part of her dress.

The 'Ecu' gave us a charming dinner on our return; then a moderate bill, and an affectionate farewell; and we succeeded in catching the early evening train for Pontarlier.[53]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 48: _Aigue_, or _egue_, in the patois of this district, is equivalent to _eau_, the Latin _aqua_.]

[Footnote 49: Ebel, in his _Swiss Manual_ (French translation of 1818, t. iii.), mentions this glaciere under the head _Motiers_, and observes that it and the grotto of S. Georges are the only places in the Jura where ice remains through the summer. This statement, in common with a great part of Ebel, has been transferred to the letterpress of _Switzerland Ill.u.s.trated_.]

[Footnote 50: Switzerland sent 7,500,000 gallons of absinthe to France in 1864.]

[Footnote 51: _Point d'argent, point de Suisse_, is a proverbial expression which the Swiss twist into a historical compliment, a.s.serting that it arose in early mercenary times, from the fact that they were too virtuous to accept the suggestion of the general who hired them, and wished them to take their pay in kind from the defenceless people of the country they had served.]

[Footnote 52: It is probable that the ice is on the increase in this glaciere, and that an archway, now filled up by the growing ice, has at one time existed in the wall on this side of the care, through which the ice and water used to pour into the subterranean depths of which the old woman had told us. At the time of our visit, we could find no outlet.]

[Footnote 53: The following remarks may give some explanation of the phenomenon of alternating currents in this cave, I should suppose that during the night there is atmospheric equilibrium in the cave itself, and in the three pits A, B, C. When the heat of the sun comes into operation, the three pits are very differently affected by it, C being comparatively open to the sun's rays, while A is much less so, and B is entirely sheltered from radiation. This leads naturally to atmospheric disturbance. The air in the pit C is made warmer and less heavy than that in A and B, and the consequence is, that the column of air in C can no longer balance the columns in A and B, which therefore begin to descend, and so a current of air is driven from the cave into the pit C.

Owing to the elasticity of the atmosphere, even at a low temperature, this descent, and the consequent rush of air into C, will be overdone, and a recoil must take place, which accounts for the return current into the cave from the pit C. The sun can reach A more easily than B, and thus the air is lighter and more moveable in the former pit, so that the recoil will make itself more felt in A than in B: accordingly, we found that the main currents alternated between A and C, with very slight disturbance in the neighbourhood of B. B will, however, play its part, and the weighty column of air contained in it will oscillate, though with smaller oscillations than in the case of A. Probably, when the sun has left A, while acting still upon C, the return current from C will be much slighter, and there will be a general settling of the atmosphere in the pits A and B, until C also is freed from the sun's action, when the whole system will gradually pa.s.s into a state of equilibrium.

With respect to the action of the more protected pits, the principle of the hydraulic ram not unnaturally suggests itself.

In considering the minor details of the currents, such elements as the refrigeration of the air in its pa.s.sage across the face of the ice must be taken into account. It may be observed that the candle did not occupy an _intermediate_ position with respect to two opposing currents, for it was practically on the floor of the cave, owing to the continuity of the slope of snow on which it stood, as shown in the vertical section on p.

108.]