MYSTERIES OF THE GLACIERS.

67

This Mer de Glace is an easy and excellent residence for the scientific study of the glaciers, a subject of very great interest, formerly filled with mysteries, which the bold and persevering investigations and theories of some modern naturalists have quite cleared up. The strange movements of the glaciers, their apparent wilful rejection of extraneous bodies and substances to the surface and the margin, their increase and decrease, long remained invested with something of the supernatural; they seemed to have a soul and a life of their own. They look motionless and silent, yet they are always moving and sounding on, and they have great voices that give prophetic warning of the weather to the shepherds of the Alps. Scientific men have set up huts upon the sea, and landmarks on the mountains opposite, to test the progress of the icy masses, and in this way it was found that a cabin constructed by Professor Hugi on the glacier of the Aar, had travelled, between the years 1827 and 1840, a distance of 4600 feet. It is supposed that the Mer de Glace moves down between four and five hundred feet

annually.

It is impossible to form a grander image of the rigidity and barrenness, the coldness and death of winter, than when you stand among the billows of one of these frozen seas; and yet it is here that Nature locks up in her careful bosom the treasures of the Alpine valleys, the sources of rich summer verdure and vegetable life. They are hoarded up in winter, to be poured forth beneath the sun, and with the sun in summer. Some of the largest rivers in Europe take their rise from the glaciers, and give to the Swiss valleys their most abundant supply of water, in the season when ordinary streams are dried up. This is a most interesting provision in the economy of nature, for if the glaciers did not exist, those verdant valleys into which the summer sun pours with such fervour would be parched with drought. So the mountains are parents of perpetual streams, and the glaciers are reservoirs of plenty.

The derivation of the German name for glacier, gletscher, is suggested as coming not from their icy material, but their perpetual motion, from glitschen to glide; more probably, however, from the idea of gliding upon their surface. These glaciers

come down from the air, down out of heaven, a perpetual frozen motion ever changing and gliding, from the first fall of snow in the atmosphere, through the state of consolidated grinding blocks of ice, and then into musical streams that water the valleys. First it is a powdery, feathery snow, then granulated like hail, and denominated firn, forming vast beds and sheets around the highest mountain summits, then frozen into masses, by which time it has travelled down to within seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, where commences the great iceocean that fills the uninhabitable Alpine valleys, unceasingly freezing, melting, and moving down. It has been estimated by Saussure and others that these seas of ice, at their greatest thickness, are six or eight hundred feet deep. They are tra versed by deep fissures, and as they approach the great precipices, over which they plunge like a cataract into the vales, they are split in all directions, and heaved up into the waves, reefs, peaks, pinnacles and minarets. Underneath they are traversed by as many galleries and caverns, through which run the rills and torrents constantly gathering from the melting masses above. These innumerable streams, gathering in one as they approach the termination of the glacier, rush out from beneath it, under a great vault of ice, and thus are born into the breathing world, full-grown roaring rivers, from night, frost, and chaos.

A peasant has been known to have fallen into an ice-gulf in one of these seas, near one of the flowing sub-glacial torrents, and following the course of the stream to the foot of the glacier, he came out alive! The German naturalist, Hugi, set out to explore the recesses of one of the glaciers through the bed of a former torrent, and wandered on in its ice caverns the distance of a mile. "The ice was everywhere eaten away into domeshaped hollows, varying from two to twelve feet in height, so that the whole mass of the glacier rested at intervals on pillars, or feet of ice, irregular in size and shape, which had been left standing. As soon as any of these props gave way, a portion of the glacier would of course fall in and move on. A dim twilight, scantily transmitted through the mass of ice above, prevailed in these caverns of ice, not sufficient to allow one to

HERDSMEN OF THE GLACIERS.

69

read, except close to the fissures, which directly admitted the daylight. The intense blue of the mass of the ice contrasted remarkably with the pure white of the icy stalactites, or pendants descending from the roof. The water streamed down upon him from all sides, so that, after wandering about for two hours, at times bending and creeping, to get along under the low vault, he returned to the open air, quite drenched and half frozen.'

Wandering about under these glaciers is like making resear ches in the German sceptical philosophy; you may catch your death of cold while you are satisfying your curiosity. It is like Strauss losing himself in myth-caverns instead of Gospel verities. It is like the speculations of the author of that book entitled Vestiges of Creation.' You may see strange things and wonderful, but you come out drenched and half-frozen. And if a man should be there when the supporting stalactites give way, and should be buried under the falling masses, he would pay dear for his whistle.

This Sea of Ice, which embosoms in its farthest recesses a little living flower-garden, whither the humble-bees from Chamouny resort for honey, is also bordered by steep lonely beds of the fragrant Rhododendron, or Rose of the Alps. This hardy and beautiful flower grows from a bush larger than our sweet fern, with foliage like the leaves of the ivory-plum. It continues blooming late in the season, and sometimes covers vast declivities on the mountains at a great height, where one would hardly suppose it possible for a handful of earth to cling to the rocky surface. There, amidst the snows and ice of a thousand winters, it pours forth its perfume on the air, though there be none to inhale the fragrance, or praise the sweetness, save only "the little busy bees," that seem dizzy with delight, as they throw themselves into the bosom of these beds of roses. Higher still on the opposite side of this great ice sea there are mountain slopes of grass at the base of stupendous rocky pinnacles, whither the shepherds of the Alps drive their herds from Chamouny for three months' pasturage. They have no way of getting them there but across the dangerous glacier; and it is said that the passage is a sort of annual celebration, when men, women, and children go up to Montanvert to wit

ness and assist the difficult transportation. When the herds have crossed, one peasant stays with them for the whole three months of their summer excursion, living upon bread and cheese, with one cow among the herd to supply him with milk. When he is not sleeping, he knits stockings and ruminates as contentedly as the browsing cattle, his only care being to increase his store.

men.

But all this while, what is the man's mind, heart, and soul doing? Only knitting stockings and looking at the green grass and the fat cattle! One cannot help thinking of the great need of intellectual and spiritual resources for these lonely herdsHow much a man might do in these three months' total seclusion and leisure on the mountains! He might almost fit himself to be the schoolmaster of the valley for the winter-he might commit the Bible to heart-might learn Hebrew, Greek, something besides the mathematics of Ave Marias and Credos, or the homely swain's arithmetic that seemed so pleasant to King Henry ;-so many days the ewes have been with young; so many weeks ere the poor fools will yean; so many years to the shearing; so many pounds to the fleece. But the Bible here is in the main a forbidden book—and so, from childhood, the upper and nether springs of thought and feeling are sealed, and the mind of the valley moves, not like the living streams, that with each individual gladsome impulse go dancing, sparkling, hurrying to the ocean, but, like the frozen glacier in eternal chains, some four hundred feet a year, over the same path, by the same necessity of icy nature.

CHAPTER X.

CASCADE DES PELERINES-A SWISS FAMILY-COLERIDGE'S HYMN.

THERE is a water-fall in Chamouny which no traveller should omit going to see, though I believe many do, called the "Cascade des Pelerines.' It is one of the most curious and beautiful scenes in Switzerland. A torrent issues from the Glacier des Pelerines high up the mountain above the Glacier du Bos

CASCADE DES PELERINES.

71

sons, and descends by a succession of leaps, in a deep gorge, from precipice to precipice almost in one continual cataract. But it is all the while merely gathering force, and preparing for its last magnificent deep plunge and recoil of beauty. Springing in one round condensed column out of the gorge over a perpendicular cliff, it strikes at its fall, with its whole body of water, into a sort of vertical rock basin, which one would suppose its prodigious velocity and weight would split into a thousand pieces; but the whole cataract, thus arrested at once, suddenly rebounds in a parabolic arch, at least sixty feet into the air, and then, having made this splendid airy curvature, falls with great noise and beauty into the natural channel below. It is beyond measure beautiful. It is like the fall of divine grace into chosen hearts, that send it forth again for the world's refreshment, in something like such a shower and spray of loveliness, to go winding its life-giving course afterwards as still waters in green pastures.

The force of the recoil from the plunge of so large a body of water at such a height is so great that large stones thrown into the stream above the fall may be heard amidst the din striking into the basin, and then are instantly seen careering in the arch of the flashing waters. The same is the case with bushes and pieces of wood which the boys are always active in throwing in for the curiosity of visitors, who stand below and see each object invariably carried aloft with the cataract in its rebounding atmospheric gambols. When the sun is in the right position, the rainbows play about the fall like the glancing of supernatural wings, as if angels were taking a showerbath. If you have "the head and the legs of a chamois," as my guide said to me, you may climb entirely above this magnificent scene, and look out over the cliff right down into the point where the cataract shoots like the lightning, to be again shot back in ten thousand branching jets of diamonds.

If you take the trouble to explore these precipitous gorges farther up the mountains, you will find other cataracts similar to this, in the midst of such green Alpine herbage, such dark overshadowing verdure, such wild sublimity of landscape, that the pleasure of your discoveries amply repays the fatigue of