The Glaciers of the Alps Part 2

FOOTNOTES:

[A] The Weisshorn was first scaled, by Tyndall, in 1861.--L. C. T.

[Sidenote: THE TYROL. 1856.]

THE TYROL.

(3.)

My subsequent destination was Vienna; but I wished to a.s.sociate with my journey thither a visit to some of the glaciers of the Tyrol. At Landeck, on the 29th of August, I learned that the nearest glacier was that adjacent to the Gebatsch Alp, at the head of the Kaunserthal; and on the following morning I was on my way towards this valley. I sought to obtain a guide at Kaltebrunnen, but failed; and afterwards walked to the little hamlet of Feuchten, where I put up at a very lonely inn. My host, I believe, had never seen an Englishman, but he had heard of such, and remarked to me in his patois with emphasis, "_Die Englander sind die kuhnsten Leute in dieser Welt._" Through his mediation I secured a chamois-hunter, named Johann Auer, to be my guide, and next morning I started with this man up the valley. The sun, as we ascended, smote the earth and us with great power; high mountains flanked us on either side, while in front of us, closing the view, was the ma.s.s of the Weisskugel, covered with snow. At three o'clock we came in sight of the glacier, and soon afterwards I made the acquaintance of the _Senner_ or cheesemakers of the Gebatsch Alp.

[Sidenote: THE GEBATSCH ALP. 1856.]

The chief of these was a fine tall fellow, with free, frank countenance, which, however, had a dash of the mountain wildness in it. His feet were bare, he wore breeches, and fragments of stockings partially covered his legs, leaving a black zone between the upper rim of the sock and the breeches. His feet and face were of the same swarthy hue; still he was handsome, and in a measure pleasant to look upon. He asked me what he could cook for me, and I requested some bread and milk; the former was a month old, the latter was fresh and delicious, and on these I fared sumptuously. I went to the glacier afterwards with my guide, and remained upon the ice until twilight, when we returned, guided by no path, but pa.s.sing amid crags grasped by the gnarled roots of the pine, through green dells, and over bilberry knolls of exquisite colouring. My guide kept in advance of me singing a Tyrolese melody, and his song and the surrounding scene revived and realised all the impressions of my boyhood regarding the Tyrol.

Milking was over when we returned to the chalet, which now contained four men exclusive of myself and my guide. A fire of pine logs was made upon a platform of stone, elevated three feet above the floor; there was no chimney, as the smoke found ample vent through the holes and fissures in the sides and roof. The men were all intensely sunburnt, the legitimate brown deepening into black with beard and dirt. The chief senner prepared supper, breaking eggs into a dish, and using his black fingers to empty the sh.e.l.l when the alb.u.men was refractory. A fine erect figure he was as he stood in the glowing light of the fire. All the men were smoking, and now and then a brand was taken from the fire to light a renewed pipe, and a ruddy glare flung thereby over the wild countenance of the smoker. In one corner of the chalet, and raised high above the ground, was a large bed, covered with clothes of the most dubious black-brown hue; at one end was a little water-wheel turned by a brook, which communicated motion to a churndash which made the b.u.t.ter.

The beams and rafters were covered with cheeses, drying in the warm smoke. The senner, at my request, showed me his storeroom, and explained to me the process of making cheese, its interest to me consisting in its bearing upon the question of slaty cleavage. Three gigantic ma.s.ses of b.u.t.ter were in the room, and I amused my host by calling them b.u.t.ter-glaciers. Soon afterwards a bit of cotton was stuck in a lump of grease, which was placed in a lantern, and the wick ignited; the chamois-hunter took it, and led the way to our resting-place, I having previously declined a good-natured invitation to sleep in the big black bed already referred to.

[Sidenote: AN ALPINE CHALET. 1856.]

There was a cowhouse near the chalet, and above it, raised on pillars of pine, and approached by a ladder, was a loft, which contained a quant.i.ty of dry hay: this my guide shook to soften the lumps, and erected an eminence for my head. I lay down, drawing my plaid over me, but Auer affirmed that this would not be a sufficient protection against the cold; he therefore piled hay upon me to the shoulders, and proposed covering up my head also. This, however, I declined, though the biting coldness of the air, which sometimes blew in upon us, afterwards proved to me the wisdom of the suggestion. Having set me right, my chamois-hunter prepared a place for himself, and soon his heavy breathing informed me that he was in a state of bliss which I could only envy. One by one the stars crossed the apertures in the roof. Once the Pleiades hung above me like a cl.u.s.ter of gems; I tried to admire them, but there was no fervour in my admiration. Sometimes I dozed, but always as this was about to deepen into positive sleep it was rudely broken by the clamour of a group of pigs which occupied the ground-floor of our dwelling. The object of each individual of the group was to secure for himself the maximum amount of heat, and hence the outside members were incessantly trying to become inside ones. It was the struggle of radical and conservative among the pachyderms, the politics being determined by the accident of position.

[Sidenote: THE GEBATSCH GLACIER. 1856.]

I rose at five o'clock on the 1st of September, and after a breakfast of black bread and milk ascended the glacier as far as practicable. We once quitted it, crossed a promontory, and descended upon one of its branches, which was flanked by some fine old moraines. We here came upon a group of seven marmots, which with yells of terror scattered themselves among the rocks. The points of the glacier beyond my reach I examined through a telescope; along the faces of the sections the lines of stratification were clearly shown; and in many places where the ma.s.s showed manifest signs of lateral pressure, I thought I could observe the cleavage pa.s.sing though the strata. The point, however, was too important to rest upon an observation made from such a distance, and I therefore abstained from mentioning it subsequently. I examined the fissures and the veining, and noticed how the latter became most perfect in places where the pressure was greatest. The effect of _oblique_ pressure was also finely shown: at one place the thrust of the descending glacier was opposed by the resistance offered by the side of the valley, the direction of the force being oblique to the side; the consequence was a structure nearly parallel to the valley, and consequently oblique to the thrust which I believe to be its cause.

[Sidenote: A CHAMOIS ON THE ROCKS. 1856.]

After five hours' examination we returned to our chalet, where we refreshed ourselves, put our things in order, and faced a nameless "Joch," or pa.s.s; our aim being to cross the mountains into the valley of Lantaufer, and reach Graun that evening. After a rough ascent over the alp we came to the dead crag, where the weather had broken up the mountains into ruinous heaps of rock and shingle. We reached the end of a glacier, the ice of which was covered by sloppy snow, and at some distance up it came upon an islet of stones and debris, where we paused to rest ourselves. My guide, as usual, ranged over the summits with his telescope, and at length exclaimed, "I see a chamois." The creature stood upon a cliff some hundreds of yards to our left, and seemed to watch our movements. It was a most graceful animal, and its life and beauty stood out in forcible ant.i.thesis to the surrounding savagery and death.

On the steep slopes of the glacier I was a.s.sisted by the hand of my guide. In fact, on this day I deemed places dangerous, and dreaded them as such, which subsequent practice enabled me to regard with perfect indifference; so much does what we call courage depend upon habit, or on the fact of knowing that we have really nothing to fear. Doubtless there are times when a climber has to make up his mind for very unpleasant possibilities, and even gather calmness from the contemplation of the worst; but in most cases I should say that his courage is derived from the latent feeling that the chances of safety are immensely in his favour.

[Sidenote: Pa.s.sAGE OF A JOCH. 1856.]

After a tough struggle we reached the narrow row of crags which form the crest of the pa.s.s, and looked into the world of mountain and cloud on the other side. The scene was one of stern grandeur--the misty lights and deep cloud-glooms being so disposed as to augment the impression of vastness which the scene conveyed. The breeze at the summit was exceedingly keen, but it gave our muscles tone, and we sprang swiftly downward through the yielding debris which here overlies the mountain, and in which we sometimes sank to the knees. Lower down we came once more upon the ice. The glacier had at one place melted away from its bounding cliff, which rose vertically to our right, while a wall of ice 60 or 80 feet high was on our left. Between the two was a narrow pa.s.sage, the floor of which was snow, which I knew to be hollow beneath: my companion, however, was in advance of me, and he being the heavier man, where he trod I followed without hesitation. On turning an angle of the rock I noticed an expression of concern upon his countenance, and he muttered audibly, "I did not expect this." The snow-floor had, in fact, given way, and exposed to view a clear green lake, one boundary of which was a sheer precipice of rock, and the other the aforesaid wall of ice; the latter, however, curved a little at its base, so as to form a short steep slope which overhung the water. My guide first tried the slope alone; biting the ice with his shoe-nails, and holding on by the spike of his baton, he reached the other side. He then returned, and, divesting myself of all superfluous clothes, as a preparation for the plunge which I fully expected, I also pa.s.sed in safety. Probably the consciousness that I had water to fall into instead of pure s.p.a.ce, enabled me to get across without anxiety or mischance; but had I, like my guide, been unable to swim, my feelings would have been far different.

This accomplished, we went swiftly down the valley, and the more I saw of my guide the more I liked him. He might, if he wished, have made his day's journey shorter by stopping before he reached Graun, but he would not do so. Every word he said to me regarding distances was true, and there was not the slightest desire shown to magnify his own labour. I learnt by mere accident that the day's work had cut up his feet, but his cheerfulness and energy did not bate a jot till he had landed me in the Black Eagle at Graun. Next morning he came to my room, and said that he felt sufficiently refreshed to return home. I paid him what I owed him, when he took my hand, and, silently bending down his head, kissed it; then, standing erect, he stretched forth his right hand, which I grasped firmly in mine, and bade him farewell; and thus I parted from Johann Auer, my brave and truthful chamois-hunter.

On the following day I met Dr. Frankland in the Finstermuntz pa.s.s, and that night we bivouacked together at Mals. Heavy rain fell throughout the night, but it came from a region high above that of liquidity. It was first snow, which, as it descended through the warmer strata of the atmosphere, was reduced to water. Overhead, in the air, might be traced a surface, below which the precipitate was liquid, above which it was solid; and this surface, intersecting the mountains which surround Mals, marked upon them a beautifully-defined _snow-line_, below which the pines were dark and the pastures green, but above which pines and pastures and crags were covered with the freshly-fallen snow.

[Sidenote: THE STELVIO. 1856.]

[Sidenote: COLOUR OF FRESH SNOW. 1856.]

On the 2nd of September we crossed the Stelvio. The brown cone of the well-known Madatschspitze was clear, but the higher summits were clouded, and the fragments of sunshine which reached the lower world wandered like gleams of fluorescent light over the glaciers. Near the snow-line the partial melting of the snow had rendered it coa.r.s.ely granular, but as we ascended it became finer, and the light emitted from its cracks and cavities a pure and deep blue. When a staff was driven into the snow low down the mountain, the colour of the light in the orifice was scarcely sensibly blue, but higher up this increased in a wonderful degree, and at the summit the effect was marvellous. I struck my staff into the snow, and turned it round and round; the surrounding snow cracked repeatedly, and flashes of blue light issued from the fissures. The fragments of snow that adhered to the staff were, by contrast, of a beautiful pink yellow, so that, on moving the staff with such fragments attached to it up and down, it was difficult to resist the impression that a pink flame was ascending and descending in the hole. As we went down the other side of the pa.s.s, the effect became more and more feeble, until, near the snow-line, it almost wholly disappeared.

We remained that night at the baths of Bormio, but the following afternoon being fine we wished to avail ourselves of the fair weather to witness the scene from the summit of the pa.s.s. Twilight came on before we reached Santa Maria, but a gorgeous orange overspread the western horizon, from which we hoped to derive sufficient light. It was a little too late when we reached the top, but still the scene was magnificent. A mult.i.tude of mountains raised their crowns towards heaven, while above all rose the snow-white cone of the Ortler. Far into the valley the giant stretched his granite limbs, until they were hid from us by darkness. As this deepened, the heavens became more and more crowded with stars, which blazed like gems over the heads of the mountains. At times the silence was perfect, unbroken save by the crackling of the frozen snow beneath our own feet; while at other times a breeze would swoop down upon us, keen and hostile, scattering the snow from the roofs of the wooden galleries in frozen powder over us. Long after night had set in, a ghastly gleam rested upon the summit of the Ortler, while the peaks in front deepened to a dusky neutral tint, the more distant ones being lost in gloom. We descended at a swift pace to Trafoi, which we reached before 11 P.M.

[Sidenote: SINGULAR HAILSTORM. 1856.]

Meran was our next resting-place, whence we turned through the Schnalzerthal to Unserfrau, and thence over the Hochjoch to Fend. From a religious procession we took a guide, who, though partly intoxicated, did his duty well. Before reaching the summit of the pa.s.s we were a.s.sailed by a violent hailstorm, each hailstone being a frozen cone with a rounded end. Had not their motion through the air something to do with the shape of these hailstones? The theory of meteorites now generally accepted is that they are small planetary bodies drawn to the earth by gravity, and brought to incandescence by friction against the earth's atmosphere. Such a body moving through the atmosphere must have condensed hot air in front of it, and rarefied cool air behind it; and the same is true to a small extent of a hailstone. This distribution of temperature must, I imagine, have some influence on the shape of the stone. Possibly also the stratified appearance of some hailstones may be connected with this action.[A]

[Sidenote: THE HOCHJOCH AND FEND. 1856.]

The hail ceased and the heights above us cleared as we ascended. At the top of the pa.s.s we found ourselves on the verge of a great _neve_, which lay between two ranges of summits, sloping down to the base of each range from a high and rounded centre: a wilder glacier scene I have scarcely witnessed. Wishing to obtain a more perfect view of the region, I diverged from the track followed by Dr. Frankland and the guide, and climbed a ridge of snow about half a mile to the right of them. A glorious expanse was before me, stretching itself in vast undulations, and heaping itself here and there into mountainous cones, white and pure, with the deep blue heaven behind them. Here I had my first experience of hidden creva.s.ses, and to my extreme astonishment once found myself in the jaws of a fissure of whose existence I had not the slightest notice. Such accidents have often occurred to me since, but the impression made by the first is likely to remain the strongest. It was dark when we reached the wretched Wirthshaus at Fend, where, badly fed, badly lodged, and disturbed by the noise of innumerable rats, we spent the night. Thus ended my brief glacier expedition of 1856; and on the observations then made, and on subsequent experiments, was founded a paper presented to the Royal Society by Mr. Huxley and myself.[B]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] I take the following account of a grander storm of the above character from Hooker's 'Himalayan Journals,' vol. ii. p. 405.

"On the 20th (March, 1849) we had a change in the weather: a violent storm from the south-west occurred at noon, with hail of a strange form, the stones being sections of hollow spheres, half an inch across and upwards, formed of cones with truncated apices and convex bases: these cones were aggregated together with their bases outwards. The large ma.s.ses were followed by a shower of the separate conical pieces, and that by heavy rain. On the mountains this storm was most severe: the stones lay at Darjeeling for seven days, congealed into ma.s.ses of ice several feet long and a foot thick in sheltered places: at Purneah, fifty miles south, stones one and two inches across fell, probably as whole spheres."

[B] 'Phil. Trans.' 1857, pp. 327-346.--L. C. T.

[Sidenote: THE LAKE OF GENEVA. 1857.]

EXPEDITION OF 1857.

THE LAKE OF GENEVA.

(4.)

The time occupied in the observations of 1856 embraced about five whole days; and though these days were laborious and instructive, still so short a time proved to be wholly incommensurate with the claims of so wide a problem. During the subsequent experimental treatment of the subject, I had often occasion to feel the incompleteness of my knowledge, and hence arose the desire to make a second expedition to the Alps, for the purpose of expanding, fortifying, or, if necessary, correcting first impressions.

On Thursday, the 9th of July, 1857, I found myself upon the Lake of Geneva, proceeding towards Vevey. I had long wished to see the waters of this renowned inland sea, the colour of which is perhaps more interesting to the man of science than to the poets who have sung about it. Long ago its depth of blue excited attention, but no systematic examination of the subject has, so far as I know, been attempted. It may be that the lake simply exhibits the colour of pure water. Ice is blue, and it is reasonable to suppose that the liquid obtained from the fusion of ice is of the same colour; but still the question presses--"Is the blue of the Lake of Geneva to be entirely accounted for in this way?"

The attempts which have been made to explain it otherwise show that at least a doubt exists as to the sufficiency of the above explanation.

[Sidenote: BLUENESS OF THE WATER. 1857.]

It is only in its deeper portions that the colour of the lake is properly seen. Where the bottom comes into view the pure effect of the water is disturbed; but where the water is deep the colour is deep: between Rolle and Nyon for example, the blue is superb. Where the blue was deepest, however, it gave me the impression of turbidity rather than of deep transparency. At the upper portion of the lake the water through which the steamer pa.s.sed was of a blue green. Wishing to see the place where the Rhone enters the lake, I walked on the morning of the 10th from Villeneuve to Novelle, and thence through the woods to the river side. Proceeding along an embankment, raised to defend the adjacent land from the incursions of the river, an hour brought me to the place where it empties itself into the lake. The contrast between the two waters was very great: the river was almost white with the finely divided matter which it held in suspension; while the lake at some distance was of a deep ultramarine.

The lake in fact forms a reservoir where the particles held in suspension by the river have time to subside, and its waters to become pure. The subsidence of course takes place most copiously at the head of the lake; and here the deposit continues to form new land, adding year by year to the thousands of acres which it has already left behind it, and invading more and more the s.p.a.ce occupied by the water. Innumerable plates of mica spangled the fine sand which the river brought down, and these, mixing with the water, and flashing like minute mirrors as the sun's rays fell upon them, gave the otherwise muddy stream a silvery appearance. Had I an opportunity I would make the following experiments:--

(_a_.) Compare the colour of the light transmitted by a column of the lake water fifteen feet long with that transmitted by a second column, of the same length, derived from the melting of freshly fallen mountain snow.

(_b_.) Compare in the same manner the colour of the ordinary water of the lake with that of the same water after careful distillation.

(_c_.) Strictly examine whether the light transmitted by the ordinary water contains an excess of red over that transmitted by the distilled water: this latter point, as will be seen farther on, is one of peculiar interest.