Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland Part 2

The flooring of mingled ice and snow, on which we stood, sloped through about five vertical feet from the foot of the wall, and came to an end on broken rocks, from which the terminal wall of the cave sprang up. The effect of the view from this point, as we looked up the long slope of ice to where the ladders and a small piece of sky were visible, was most striking. The accompanying engraving is from a sketch which attempts to represent it; the reality is much less prim, and much more full of beautiful detail, but still the engraving gives a fair idea of the general appearance of the cave.

While I was occupied in making sketches and measurements, Mignot was engaged in chopping discontentedly at the floor, in two or three different places. At length he seemed to find a place to his mind, and chopped perseveringly till his axe went through, and then he suggested that we should follow. The hole was not tempting. It opened into the blackest possible darkness, and Mignot thrust his legs through, feeling for a foothold, which, by lowering himself almost to his armpits, he soon discovered: the foothold, however, proved to be a loose stone, which gave way under him and bounded down, apparently over an incline of like stones, to a distance which sounded very alarming. But he would not give in, and at length, descending still further by means of the snow in which the hole was made, he was rewarded by finding a solid block which bore his weight, and he speedily disappeared altogether, summoning me to follow. I proposed to light a candle first, not caring to go through such a hole, in such a floor, into no one knew what; but he was so very peremptory, evidently thinking that if he had gone through without a pioneering candle his monsieur might do the same, that there was nothing for it but to obey.

The hole was very near the junction of the floor with the slope of stones where the floor terminated, and the s.p.a.ce between the hole and the slope seemed to be filled up with a confused ma.s.s of snow and ice, in which the snow largely predominated; so that there was good hold for hands and feet in pa.s.sing down to the stones, which might be about 7 feet below the upper surface of the floor. Here we crouched in the darkness, with our faces turned away from the presumed slope of stones, till a light was struck. The accomplice did not find it in the bond that he should go down, and he preferred to reserve his energies for his own peculiar glaciere.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOWER GLACIeRE OF THE PRe DE S. LIVRES.]

As soon as the candle had mastered a portion of the darkness, we found that we were squatting on a steeply sloping descent of large blocks of stone, while in face of us was a magnificent wall of ice, evidently the continuation of the wall above, marked most plainly with horizontal lines. This wall pa.s.sed down vertically to join the slope on which we were, at a depth below our feet which the light of the candle had not yet fathomed. The horizontal bands were so clear, that, if we had possessed climbing apparatus, we could have counted the number of layers with accuracy. Of course we scrambled down the stones, and found after a time that the angle formed by the ice-wall and the slope of stones was choked up at the bottom by large pieces of rock, one piled on another just as they had fallen from the higher parts. These blocks were so large, that we were able to get down among the interstices, in a spiral manner, for some little distance; and when we were finally stopped, still the ice-wall pa.s.sed on below our feet, and there was no possible chance of determining to what depth it went. The atmosphere at this point was a sort of frozen vapour, most unpleasant in all respects, and the candles burned very dimly. The thermometer stood at 32, half-way down the slope of stones.

We were able to stretch a string in a straight line from the lowest point we reached, through the interstices of the blocks of stone, and up to the entrance-hole, and this measurement gave 50 feet.

Considering the inclination of the upper ice-floor, and the sharpness of the angle between the wall of ice and the line of our descent to this lowest point, I believe that 50 feet will fairly represent the height of the ice-wall from this point to the foot of the slope from the upper wall; so that 72 feet will be the whole depth of ice, from the top of the third ladder to the point where our further progress downwards was arrested. The correctness of this calculation depends upon the honesty of Mignot, who had charge of the farther end of the string, and was proud of the wonders of his cave. A dishonest man might easily, under the circ.u.mstances, have pulled up a few feet more of string than was necessary, but 50 feet seemed in no way an improbable result of the measurement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SECTION OF THE LOWER GLACIeRE OF THE PRe DE S. LIVRES.]

The ice was as solid and firm as can well be conceived. The horizontal bands would seem to prove conclusively that it was no coating of greater or less thickness on the face of a vertical wall of rock, an idea which might suggest itself to anyone who had not seen it, and I think it probable that the amount of ice represented in the section of the cave is not an exaggeration. We were unable to measure the whole length of the wall in the lower cave, from the large number of blocks of stone which had fallen at one end, and lay against its face. Probably, from the nature of the case, it was not so long as the 72 feet of wall above; but we measured 50 feet, and could see it still pa.s.sing on to the right hand as we faced it. In trying to penetrate farther along the face, I found a wing of the brown fly we had seen in considerable abundance on the ice in La Genolliere, frozen into the remains of a column.

There was so very much to be observed on all sides, and the measurements took up so much time, owing to the peculiar difficulties which attended them, that I did not examine with sufficient care the curious floor of ice through which we cut our way to the lower cavern. Neither did I notice the roof of the cavern thus reached, which may be very different from the shape of the upper surface of the floor composing it. If the ice-wall goes straight up, and the roof is formed of the ice-floor alone, then it is a very remarkable feature indeed. But, more probably, the lower wall leans over more and more towards the top, and so forms as it were a part of the roof. It is possible that, as the wall has grown, each successive annual layer has projected farther and farther, till at last some year very favourable to the increase of ice has carried the projection for that year nearly to the opposite stones, and then an unfavourable year or two would form the foot of the upper wall. This seems more probable, from the loose const.i.tution of the floor at the point where it joins the stones, as if it were there only made up of drift and debris, while the part of the floor nearer the foot of the wall is solid ice. It has been suggested to me that possibly water acc.u.mulates in the time of greatest thaw to a very large extent in the lower parts of the cave, and the ice-floor is formed where the frost first takes hold of this water. But the slope of the ice-floor is against this theory, to a certain extent; and the amount of water necessary to fill the cavity would be so enormous, that it is contrary to all experience to imagine such a collection, especially as the cave showed no signs of present thaw. The appearance of the rocks, too, in the lower cave, and the surface of the ice-wall there, gave no indications of the action of water; and there was no trace of ice among the stones, as there certainly would have been if water had filled the cave, and gradually retired before the attacks of frost, or in consequence of the opening up of drainage. There were pieces of the trunks of trees, also, and large bones, lying about at different levels on the rocks. I never searched for bones in these caves, owing to the absence of the stalagmitic covering which preserves cavern-bones from decay; nor did I take any notice of such as presented themselves without search, for the _bergers_ are in the habit of throwing the carcases of deceased cows into any deep hole in the neighbourhood of the place where the carcases may be found, in consequence of the general belief that living cows go mad if they find the grave of a companion; so that I should probably have made a laborious collection of the bones of the _bos domesticus_. This belief of the bergers respecting the cows is supported by several circ.u.mstantial and apparently trustworthy accounts of fearful fights among herds of cattle over the grave of some of the herd. The sight of a companion's blood is said to have a similar effect upon them. Thus a small pasturage between Anzeindaz and the Col de Cheville, on the border of the cantons Vaud and Valais, is still called _Boulaire_ from legendary times, when the herdsmen of Vaud (then Berne) won back from certain Valaisan thieves the cattle the latter were carrying off from La Varraz. Some of the cows were wounded in the battle, and the sight of their blood drove the others mad, so that they fought till almost all the herd was destroyed; whence the name Boulaire, from _eboueler_, to disembowel,--a word formed from _boue_, the patois for _boyau_.

When we left the lower darkness and ascended to the floor of ice once more, Mignot expressed a desire to see my attempt at a sketch of the glaciere from that point, as he had been much struck during his negotiatory visit of the night before by the sketch of the entrance to the Glaciere of S. Georges, chiefly because he had guessed what it was meant for. He was evidently disappointed with the representation of his own cave, for he could see nothing but a network of lines, with unintelligible words written here and there, and after some hesitation he confessed that it was not the least like it. A little explanation soon set that right, and then he began to plead vigorously for the wall which surrounded the trees at the mouth of the pit. Why was it not put in? He was told, because it could not be seen from below; but nevertheless he strongly urged its introduction, on the ground that he had built it himself, and it was such a well-built wall; facts which far more than balanced any little impossibility that might otherwise have prevented its appearance. After we had reached the gra.s.s of the outer world again, he made me sketch the entrance to the pit, pointing to the containing wall with parental pride, and standing over the sketch-book and the sketcher with an umbrella which speedily turned inside out under the combined pressure of wind, and rain, and years; a feat which it had already performed _des fois_, he said, in the course of his acquaintance with it.

Before finally leaving the glaciere, I examined the structure of the great stream of ice, at different points near the top of the limiting wall. From its outward appearance it might have been expected to be rough, but it was not so; it was knotty to the eye, but perfectly smooth to the foot, and, when cut, showed itself perfectly clear and limpid. It did not separate under the axe into misshapen pieces, with faces of every possible variation from regularity, that is, with what is called vitreous fracture, but rather separated into a number of nuts of limpid ice, each being of a prismatic form, and of much regularity in shape and size. It was smooth, dark-grey, and clear; free from air, and free from surface lines; very hard, and suggesting the idea of coa.r.s.e internal granulation. In the large ice-streams of some darker glacieres, this ice a.s.sumed a rather lighter colour by candle-light, but always presented the same granular appearance, and cut up into the same prismatic nuts, and was evidently free from const.i.tutional opacity.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: _Sancti Liberii locus_, the Swiss Dryasdust explains.

There is nothing to connect any known S. Liberius with this neighbourhood, unless it be the Armenian prince who secretly left his father's court for Jerusalem, and was sought for throughout Burgundy and other countries. It seems that Saint Oliver is merely a corruption of S.

Liberius, the Italian form of the latter, Santo Liverio, having become Sant-Oliverio, as S. Otho became in another country Sant Odo, and thence San Todo, thus creating a new Saint, S. Todus.--Act SS. May 27.]

[Footnote 19: My sisters made a two-days' excursion from Arzier to this glaciere in the autumn of 1862, and found no snow in the bottom of the pit. They took the route by Gimel to Biere, intending to defer the visit to the glaciere to the morning of the second day; but being warned by the appearance known locally as _le sappeur qui fume_, a vaporous cloud at the mouth of a cavern near the Dent d'Oche, on the other side of the Lake of Geneva, they caught the communal forester at once, and put themselves under his guidance. The distance from Biere is two hours'

good walking, and an hour and a half for the return. There was no ladder for the final descent, and the neighbouring chalet could provide nothing longer than 15 feet, the drop being 30 feet. Two Frenchmen had attempted to make their way to the cave a week before; but the old 30-foot ladder of the previous year broke under the foremost of them, and he fell into the pit, whence he was drawn up by means of a cord composed of rack-ropes from the chalet, tied together. However useful a string of cow-ties may be for rescuing a man from such a situation, A. and M. did not care to make use of that apparatus for a voluntary descent, so they were perforce contented with a distant view of the ice from the lower edge of the pit.]

[Footnote 20: See the section of this cave and pit on page 41.]

CHAPTER IV.

THE UPPER GLACIeRE OF THE PRe DE S. LIVRES.

We now put ourselves under the guidance of the accomplice, Louis, who began to express doubts of his ability to find the upper glaciere, administering consolation by reminding us that if he could not find it no one else could.

As we walked on through the mist and rain, it became necessary to circ.u.mvent a fierce-looking bull, and Mignot and the accomplice told rival tales of the dangers to which pedestrians are exposed from the violence of the cattle on some montagnes, where the bulls are allowed to grow to full size and fierceness. Mignot was quite motherly in his advice and his cautions, recommending as the surest safeguard a pocket-pistol, loaded with powder only, to be flashed in the bull's face as he makes his charge. When informed that in England an umbrella or a parasol is found to answer this purpose, he shook his head negatively, evidently having no confidence in his own umbrella, and doubting its obeying his wishes at the critical moment; indeed, it would require a considerable time, and much care and labour, to unfurl a lumbering instrument of that description. He had the best of the tale-contest with Renaud in the end, for he had himself been grazed by a bull which came up with him at the moment when he sprang into a tree.

Before very long we reached a little kennel-like hut of boughs, which no decent dog would have lived in, and no large dog could have entered, and from this we drew a charcoal-burner. No, he said, he did not know the glaciere; he had heard that one had been discovered near there, and he had spent hours in searching for it without success. A herdsman on his way from one pasturage to another could give no better help, and we began to despair, till at length Louis desired us to halt in a place sheltered from the rain, while he prosecuted the search alone. We had abundant time for observing that, like other leafy places sheltered from the rain, our resting-place was commanded by huge and frequent drops of water; but at last a joyful _Jodel_ announced the success of the accomplice, and we ran off to join him.

At first sight there was very little to see. Louis had lately been enunciating an opinion that the cave was not worth visiting, and I now felt inclined to agree with him. The general plan appeared to be much the same as in the one we had just left, but the scale was considerably smaller. The pit was not nearly so deep or so large, and, owing to the falling-in of rock and earth at one side, the snow was approached by a winding path with a gradual fall. As soon as the snow was reached, the slope became very steep, and led promptly to an arch in the rock, where the stream of ice began. The cave being shallow, the stream soon came to an end, and, unlike that in the lower glaciere, it filled the cave down to the terminal wall, and did not fill it up to the left wall. Here the ground of the cave was visible, strewn with the remains of columns, and showing the thickness of the bottom of the stream to be about 6 feet only. The arch of entrance had evidently been almost closed by a succession of large columns, but these had succ.u.mbed to the rain and heat to which they had been exposed by their position.

The left side of the cave, in descending, that is the west side, was comparatively light, being in the line from the arch; but the other side was quite dark, and after a time we found that the ice-stream, instead of terminating as we had supposed with the wall of rock at the end of the cavern, turned off to the right, and was lost in the darkness. Of course candles were brought out, though Louis a.s.sured us that he had explored this part of the cave on his previous visit, and had found that the right wall of the cave very soon stopped the stream: we, on the contrary, by tying a candle to a long stick, and thrusting it down the slope of ice, found that the stream pa.s.sed down extremely steeply, and poured under a narrow and low arch in the wall of the cave, beyond which nothing could be seen. We despatched pieces of ice along the slope, and could hear them whizzing on after they had pa.s.sed the arch, and landing apparently on stones far below; so I called for the cords, and told Louis that we must cut our way down. But, alas! the cords had been left at the other glaciere! One long bag, with a hole in the middle like an old-fas.h.i.+oned purse, had carried the luncheon at one end and the ropes at the other; and when the luncheon was finished, the bag had been stowed away under safe trees till our return. This was of course immensely annoying, and I rang the changes on the few words of abuse which invention or knowledge supplied, as we sat damp and s.h.i.+vering on the verge of the slope, idly sending down pieces of broken columns which brought forth tantalising sounds from the subterranean regions. At length Renaud was moved to shame, and declared that he would cut his way down, rope or no rope; but this seemed so horribly hazardous a proceeding under all the circ.u.mstances, that I forbad his attempting it.

Seeing, however, that he was determined to do something, we arranged ourselves into an apparatus something like a sliding telescope. Louis cut a first step down the slope, and there took his stand till such time as Mignot got a firm grasp of the tail of his blouse with both hands, I meanwhile holding Mignot's tail with one hand, and the long stick with the candle attached to it with the other; thus professedly supporting the whole apparatus, and giving the necessary light for the work. Even so, we tried again to persuade Renaud to give it up, but he was warmed to his work, and really the arrangement answered remarkably well: when he wished to descend to a new step, Mignot let out a little blouse, and, being himself similarly relieved, descended likewise a step, and then the remaining link of the chain followed. The leader slipped once, but fortunately grasped a projecting piece of rock, for the stream was here confined within narrow walls, and so the strength of the apparatus was not tested; it could scarcely have stood any serious call upon its powers.

After a considerable period of very slow progress, Renaud asked for the candlestick, never more literally a stick than now, and thrust it under the arch, stooping down so as to see what the farther darkness might contain. We above could see nothing, but, after an anxious pause, he cried _On peut aller!_ with a lively satisfaction so completely shared by Mignot, that that worthy person was on the point of letting Renaud's blouse go, in order to indulge in gestures of delight. The step-cutting went on merrily after this announcement, and one by one we came to the arch and pa.s.sed through, finding it rather a trough than an arch; the breadth was about 4 feet, and the height from 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 feet, and, as we pushed through, our b.r.e.a.s.t.s were pressed on to the ice, while our backs sc.r.a.ped against the rock which formed the roof.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SECOND CAVE OF THE UPPER GLACIeRE OF THE PRe DE S.

LIVRES.]

As soon as this trough was pa.s.sed, the ice spread out like a fan, and finally landed us in a subterranean cavern, 72 feet long by 36 feet broad, to which this was the only entrance. The breadth of the fan at the bottom was 27 feet; and near the archway a very striking column poured from a vertical fissure in the wall, and joined the main stream. The fissure was partially open to the cave, and showed the solid round column within the rock: this column measured 18-1/2 feet in circ.u.mference, a little below the point where it became free of the fissure, and it had a stream of ice 22 feet long pouring from its base.

The colour of the column was unusual, being a dull yellowish green, and the peculiar structure of the ice gave the whole ma.s.s the appearance of coursing down very rapidly, as if the water had been frozen while thus moving, and had not therefore ceased so to move. At the bottom of the fan, the flooring of the cave consisted of broken stones for a small s.p.a.ce, and then came a black lake of ice, which occupied all the centre of the cave, and afforded us no opportunity of even guessing at its depth. From the manner, however, in which it blended with the stones at its edge, I am not inclined to believe that this depth was anything very great.

Renaud, in his impetuosity, had ceased to cut steps towards the bottom of the slope, and had slipped down the last few feet, of course cutting the remaining steps before attempting to reascend. We found him strutting about the floor of the cave, tossing his wet cap in the air, and crying _No one! No one! I the first!_, declining to take any part in measurements until the full of his delight and pride had been poured out. He shouted so loud that I was obliged to stop him, lest by some chance the unwonted disturbance of the air should bring down an unstable block from the roof of the arch, and seal us up for ever. There was no sign of incipient thaw in the cave, and the air was very dry, so much so as at once to call attention to the fact. At the farthest end, a lofty dome opened up in the roof; and possibly at some time or other the rock may here fall through, and afford another means of entrance. Beneath this dome a very lovely cl.u.s.ter of columns had grouped itself, formed of the clear porcelain-like ice, and fretted and festooned with the utmost delicacy, as if Andersen's Ice Maiden had been there in one of her amiable moods, and had built herself a palace. This dome in the roof was similar to many which I afterwards observed in other glacieres, being a vertical fissure with flutings from top to bottom--not a spherical dome, but of that more elegant shape which the female dress of modern times a.s.sumes on a tall person.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VERTICAL SECTIONS OF THE UPPER GLACIeRE OF THE PRe DE S.

LIVRES. [21]]

Between the base of the circular column and the wall, we found a rare instance of clear jelly-like ice, without any lines external or internal, such as is formed in the open air under very favourable circ.u.mstances. The ordinary number of undergraduate May Terms had afforded various opportunities for studying the comparative clearness of different pieces of ice, but certainly no one ever saw a lemon pippin through an inch and a half of that material so clearly as we now saw the white rock through 1-1/2 feet. Mignot, indeed, said 2 feet; but it was his way to make a large estimate of dimensions, and he constantly interrupted my record of measurements by the a.s.sertion that I had made them _moins que plus_. We were all disappointed by the actual size of the ice-fall which it had cost us so much time and trouble to descend, the distance from the first step to the last being only 26 feet: as this, however, was given by a string stretched from the one point to the other, and not following the concave surface of the ice, the real distance was something more than this.

It was now getting rather late, considering the journey one of us had yet to perform, and we walked quickly away from the glaciere, agreeing that it was not improbable that in that part of the Jura there might be many hidden caves containing more or less ice, with no entrance from the world outside, except the fissures which afford a way for the water. The entrance to this cave was so small, that the same physical effect might well be produced by one or two cracks in the rock, such as every one is well acquainted with who has walked on the fissured limestone summits of the lower mountains; and, indeed, Renaud positively affirmed that at the time of his former visit there was not even this entrance to the lower cave, for the ice-stream reached then a higher point of the wall, and completely filled and hid the arch we had discovered. It is very difficult to see how ice can exist in a cave which has no atmospheric communication with the colds of winter, as would apparently be the case with this cave if the one entrance were closed; but where the cracks and small fissures in the rock do provide such communication, there is no reason why we should not imagine all manner of glacial beauties decorating unknown cavities, beyond the general physical law to which all the glacieres would seem to be exceptions.

Mignot now became communicative as to the amount of ice supplied by his glaciere, the lower of the two we had seen; and his statistics were so utterly confused, that I gave him ten centimes and an address, and charged him to write it all down from his account-book, and send it by post. The letter was accordingly written on July 24, and after trying many unsuccessful addresses in various parts of Switzerland, it finally reached England in the middle of September. It tells its own tale sufficiently well, and is therefore given here with all the mistakes of the original.

'Mon cher Monsieur Browne,--J'ai beaucoup tarde a vous ecrire les details promis, sans doute je ne voulait pas vous...o...b..ier; nous sommes affliges dans notre maison ma femme et gravement malade ce qui me donne beaucoup de tourment jour et nuit, enfin ce n'est pas ce qui doit faire notre entretient.

En 1863. Nous avons exploite comme suit. (Depenses.)

Aoust 27 10 journees pour confectionner les Ech.e.l.les et les poser.

" 29 3 journees pour couper la gla.s.se.

" 31 11 journees pour sortir la gla.s.se avec les hotes.

" 31 4 chars a deux chevaux pour ammener Menes la charge a deux: des St. Georges a Septembre 1 Gland plusieurs autres journees pour accompagner les chars. 70 pots de vin bu en faisant ces chargements, pour trois cordes pour se tenir.

Septembre 2 Trois journees pour couper.

le 3 12 journees pour sortir.

'Cher Monsieur.--Je ne vous ait pas mis le prix de chaque articles; ni tout-a fait tous les traveaux mais pour vous donner une idee, je veux vous donner connaissance du cout general des depences pour deux chargements s'eleve a 535 francs. Je vous donne aussi connaissance de la quant.i.te de gla.s.se rendue 235 quinteaux a 3 francs, qui produit 705 francs reste net sur ces deux chargements 175 francs: par consequent mon cher Monsieur je n'ai pas besoin de vous donner des details des chargements suivants c'est a peu pres les memes frais, et la quant.i.te de gla.s.se aussi.

'Nous en avons refait trois chargements:--

Un le 15 Septembre.

2 le 13 Octobre.

3 le 14 Novembre.

'Cela comprend toute l'exploitation de 1863.

'Vous m'excuserez beaucoup de mon r.e.t.a.r.d.