THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES, IN THE JURA.
The best way of reaching this glacière from Geneva would be to take the
steamer to Rolle, or the train to one of the neighbouring stations,
between Geneva and Lausanne, and thence pass up the slope of the Jura by
the road which leads through Gimel. For the train, the Allaman station
would be the most convenient, as an omnibus runs from Allaman to
Aubonne, where the poste for Gimel may be caught. But from Arzier there
is a short cut of less than two hours along the side of the hills,
leaving that village by a deep gorge not unfitly named _L'Enfer_, and a
dark wood which retains an odour of more savage bygone times in its name
of the 'Bear's Wood,' as containing a cavern where an old bear was
detected in the act of attempting to winter.[12]
The village of S. Georges has very respectable accommodation for a
single traveller, _au Cavalier_. The common day-room will be found
untenable by most Englishmen, however largely they may delight in
rough quarters; but there is a double-bedded room at the end of a
bricked passage up-stairs, which serves well for bedroom and
sitting-room in one. The chief drawback in this arrangement is, that
the landlady inexorably removes all washing apparatus during the day,
holding that a pitcher and basin are unseemly ornaments for a
sitting-room. The deal table, of course, serves both for dressing and
for feeding purposes, but it is fortunately so long that an end can be
devoted to each; and on the whole it is possible to become
considerably attached to the room, with its three airy windows, and
the cool unceasing hum of a babbling fountain in the village-street
below. The Auberge is a large building, with a clock-tower of
considerable height, containing the clock of the commune: as soon as
the candle is put out at night, it becomes painfully evident that a
rectangular projection in one corner of the room is in connection with
this tower, and in fact forms a part of the abode of the pendulum,
which plods on with audible vigour, growing more and more audible as
the hours pass on, and making a stealthy pervading noise, as if a
couple of lazy ghosts were threshing phantom wheat. The clocks of
Vaud, too, are in the habit of striking the hour twice, with a short
interval; so that if anyone is not sure what the clock meant the first
time, he has a second chance of counting the strokes. This is no doubt
an admirable plan under ordinary circumstances, but it does certainly
try the patience of a sleepless dyspeptic after a surfeit of
café-au-lait and honey; and when he has counted carefully the first
time, and is bristling with the consciousness that it is only
midnight, it is aggravating in the extreme to have the long slow story
told a second time within a few feet of his head.
The Cavalier had retained a guide overnight, Henri Renaud by name, and
he appeared punctually at eight o'clock in the morning, got up in the
short-tail coat of the country, and a large green umbrella with mighty
ribs of whalebone. The weather was extremely unpleasant, a cold pitiless
rain rendering all attempts at protection unavailing; but, fortunately,
the glacière is only an hour and a quarter from the village. The path is
tolerably steep, leading across the _petit Pré de Rolle_, and through
woods of beech and fir, till the summit of one of the minor ridges of
the Jura is reached, whence a short descent leads to the mouth of the
glacière, something more than 4,000 feet above the sea. The ground here
slopes down towards the north; and on the slope, among fir-trees, an
irregular circular basin is seen, some seven or eight yards across,[13]
and perhaps two yards deep, at the bottom of which are two holes. One of
these holes is open, and as the guide and I--for my sisters remained at
Arzier--stood on the neck of ground between the holes, we could see the
snow lying at the bottom of the cave; the other is covered with trunks
of trees, laid over the mouth to prevent the rays of the sun from
striking down on to the ice. This protection has become necessary in
consequence of an incautious felling of wood in the immediate
neighbourhood of the mouth, which has exposed the ice to the assaults of
the weather. The commune has let the glacière for a term of nine years,
receiving six or seven hundred francs in all; and the _fermier_ extracts
the ice, and sells it in Geneva and Lausanne. In hot summers, the
supplies of the artificial ice-houses fail; and then the hotel-keepers
have recourse to the stores laid up for them by nature in the Glacières
of S. Georges and S. Livres. Hence the importance of protecting the
ice; the necessity for so doing arising in this case from the fact that
the entrance to the cave is by a hole in the roof, which exposes the ice
to direct radiation, unlike all other glacières, excepting perhaps the
_Cueva del Hielo_ on the Peak of Teneriffe.[14]
Autumn appears to be the usual time for cutting the ice, when it is
carried from the cave on men's backs as far as the commencement of the
rough mountain-road, and is there packed on chars, and so conveyed to
the nearest railway station. Renaud had worked in the cave for two
years, and asserted that they did not choose the night for carrying
the ice down to the station, and did not even care to choose a cool
day. He believed that, in the autumn of 1863, they loaded two chars a
day for fifteen days, and each char took from 40 to 50 quintaux; the
quintal containing 50 kilos, or 100 livres.[15] In Professor Pictet's
time (1822) this glacière supplied the Hospital of Geneva, whose
income depended in part on its privilege of _revente_ of all ice sold
in the town, with 25 quintaux every other day during the summer. In my
anxiety to learn the exact amount of ice now supplied by the glacière,
I determined to find out the _fermier_; but Renaud could tell nothing
of him beyond the fact that he lived in Geneva, which some promiscuous
person supplemented by the information that his name was Boucqueville,
and that he had something to do with comestibles. On entering upon a
hunt for M. Boucqueville a fortnight later, it turned out that no one
had heard of such a person, and the Directory professed equal
ignorance; but, under the head of 'Comestibles,' there appeared a
Gignoux-Bocquet, No. 34, Marché. Thirty-four, Marché, said, yes--M.
Bocquet--it was quite true: nevertheless, it was clear that monsieur
meant Sebastian aîné, on the Molard. The Molard knew only a younger
Sebastian, but suggested that the right man was probably M.
Gignoux-Chavaz, over the way; and when it was objected that
Gignoux-Bocquet, and not Gignoux-Chavaz, was the name, the Molard
replied that it made no matter,--Chavaz or Bocquet, it was all the
same. When M. Gignoux-Chavaz was found, he said that he certainly was
a man who had something to do with a glacière, but, instead of farming
the Glacière of S. Georges, he had only bought a considerable quantity
of ice two years ago from the Glacière of S. Livres, and he did not
believe that the _fermier_ of S. Georges lived in Geneva. Part of the
confusion was due to the custom of placing a wife's maiden name after
her husband's name: thus Gignoux-Chavaz implies that a male Gignoux
has married a female Chavaz; and when a Swiss marries an English lady
with a very English name, the result in the Continental mouth is
sufficiently curious.
On arriving at the entrance to the glacière, the end of a suggestive
ladder is seen under the protecting trunks; and after one or two steps
have been taken down the ladder, the effect of the cave below is
extremely remarkable, the main features being a long wall covered
thickly with white ice in sheets, a solid floor of darker-coloured ice,
and a high pyramid of snow reaching up towards the uncovered hole
already spoken of. The atmosphere of the cave is damp, and this causes
the ladders to fall speedily to decay, so that they are by no means to
be trusted: indeed, an early round gave way under one of my sisters,
when they visited the cave with me in 1861, and suggested a clear fall
of 60 feet on to a cascade of ice.[16] There are three ladders, one
below the other, and a hasty measurement gave their lengths as 20, 16,
and 28 feet. The rock-roof is only a few feet thick in the neighbourhood
of the hole of entrance.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES.]
The total length of the cave is 110 feet, lying NE. and SW., in the line
of the main chain of the Jura. The lowest part of the floor is a sea of
ice of unknown depth, 45 feet long by 15 broad; and Renaud tried my
powers of belief by asserting that in 1834 the level of this floor was
higher by half the height of the cave than now; a statement, however,
which is fully borne out by Professor Pictet's measurements in 1822,
when the depth of the glacière was less than 30 feet. Indeed, the floor
had sunk considerably since my previous visit, when it was all at the
same level down to the further end of the cave; whereas now, as will be
seen in the section, there was a platform of stones resting on ice at
that end. There are two large fissures passing into the rock, one only
of which can be represented in the section, and these were full of white
ice, not owing its whiteness apparently to the admixture of air in
bubbles, but firm and compact, and very hard, almost like porcelain.
Small stalactites hung from round fissures in the roof, formed of the
same sort of ice, and broken off short, much as the end of a leaden pipe
is sometimes seen to project from a wall. With this exception, there was
no ice hanging from the roof, though there were abundant signs of very
fine columns which had already yielded to the advancing warmth: one of
these still remained, in the form of broken blocks of ice, in the
neighbourhood of the open hole in the roof, immediately below which hole
the stones of the floor were completely bare, and the thermometer stood
at 50°. At the far end of the cave, the thermometer gave something less
than 32°; a difference so remarkable, at the same horizontal level, that
I am inclined to doubt the accuracy of the figures, though they were
registered on the spot with due care. The uncovered hole, it must be
remembered, is so large, and so completely open, that the rain falls
freely on to the stones on the floor below.
By far the most striking part of this glacière is the north-west
wall, which is covered with a sheet of ice 70 feet long, and 22 feet
high at the highest part: in the neighbourhood of the ladders, this
turns the corner of the cave, and passes up for about 9 feet under the
second ladder. The general thickness of the sheet is from a foot to a
foot and a half; and this is the chief source from which the _fermier_
draws the ice, as it is much more easily quarried than the solid
floor. Some of my friends went to the cave a few weeks after my visit,
and found that the whole sheet had been pared off and carried away. On
some parts of the wall the sheet was not completely continuous, being
formed of broad and distinct cascades, connected by cross channels of
ice, and uniting at their upper and lower ends, thus presenting many
curious and ornamental groupings. On cutting through this ice, it was
found not to lie closely on the rock, a small intermediate space being
generally left, almost filled with minute limestone particles in a
very wet state; and the whole cavern showed signs of more or less
thaw.
[Illustration: THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES. VERTICAL SECTIONS OF THE
GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES.]
It was natural to examine the structure of the ice in this glacière,
after what we had observed on La Genollière. The same prismatic
structure was universal in the sheet on the wall, and in the blocks
which lay here and there on the floor and formed the sole remains of
former columns. It was to be observed also in many parts of the
ice-floor itself. The base of one large column still remained standing
in its original position, and its upper end presented a tolerably
accurate horizontal section of the column. The centre was composed of
turbid ice, round which limpid prisms were horizontally arranged,
diverging like the feathers of a fan; then came a ring of turbid ice,
and then a second concentric ring of limpid prisms, diverging in the
same manner as those which formed the inner ring. There were in all
three or four of these concentric rings, the details showing a
considerable amount of confusion and interference: the general law,
however, was most evident, and has held in all the similar columns which
I have since examined in other glacières. The rings were not accurately
circular, but presented rather the appearance of having been formed
round a roughly-fluted pillar on an elliptical base.
The examination of the ice on the wall gave some curious results. The
horizontal arrangement of the prisms, which we had found to prevail in
vertical columns, was here modified to suit the altered conditions of
the case, and the axes of the prisms changed their inclination so as to
be always perpendicular to the surface on which the ice lay, as far as
could be determined by the eye. Thus, in following the many changes of
inclination of the wall, the axes of the prisms stood at many different
angles with the vertical, from a horizontal position where the wall
chanced to be vertical, to a vertical position on the horizontal ledges
of the rock. The extreme edges, too, of the ice, presented a very
peculiar appearance. The general thickness, as has been said, varied
from a foot to a foot and a half; and this diminished gradually along
horizontal lines, till, at the edges of the sheet, where the ice ceased,
it became of course nothing. The extreme edge was formed of globular or
hemispherical beads of ice, like the freezing of a sweating-stone, lying
so loosely on the rock that I could sweep them off in detail with one
hand, and catch them with the other as they fell. Passing farther on
towards the thicker parts of the ice, these beads stood up higher and
higher, losing their roundness, and becoming compressed into prisms of
all shapes, in very irregular imitation of the cellular tissue in
plants, the axes of the prisms following the generally-observed law.
There seems to be nothing in this phenomenon which cannot be accounted
for by the supposition of gradual thaw of small amount being applied to
a sheet of prismatic ice.
One fact was remarkable from its universal appearance. Wherever an
incision was made in this sheet of ice, the prisms snapped off at the
depth of an inch, and could be mowed down like corn by means of a stout
knife. Although they broke naturally at this constant depth, and left a
surface of limpid ice without any signs of external or internal
division, still the laminae obtained by chiselling this lower surface
carefully, broke up regularly into the shapes to be expected in sections
of prisms cut at right angles to the axis. The roughness of my
instruments made it impossible to discover how far this extended, and
whether it ceased to be the case at any given depth in the ice.
The sea of ice on the floor was in a very wet state at the surface,
being at a lower level than the stones on to which the rain from the
open hole fell; and here the prismatic structure was not apparent to the
eye, nor do I know whether it existed at all. In the Glacière of La
Genollière I carried a large block of perfectly prismatic ice into the
outer cave, where it was exposed to the free currents of air passing
from the pit of entrance to the hole newly opened by the falling in of
the ground; and, two days after, the external lines were scarcely
perceptible, while on the occasion of our third visit I found that they
had entirely disappeared, and the whole block was rapidly following
their example. This disappearance of the surface-lines under the action
of atmospheric thaw is probably the same thing as their absence when the
flooring of ice is thinly covered with water. Wherever the flooring rose
slightly towards the edges of the sea of ice, the usual structure
appeared again.
There were no currents of air in the cave, the candles burning steadily
through the whole time of our visit. Excepting for the purpose of
detecting disturbance in the air, there is no need of candles, as the
two holes in the roof supply sufficient light. Some account of the
careful observations made here by M. Thury, at different seasons of the
year, will be found in other parts of this book. We passed, on our
return, by the source of water which springs from the foot of a rock at
some distance from the glacière, and is supposed to form the outlet for
the drainage of the cave; but it is difficult to understand how this can
be the case, considering the form and character of the intervening
ground.
The two ice-caves so far described are the least interesting of all that
I have visited; but a peasant informed me, a day or two after, that if
we had penetrated to the back of the pyramid of snow which lay half
under the open hole, being the remains of the large collection which is
formed there in the winter, we might have found a deep pit which is
sometimes exposed by the melting of the snow. He had some idea that its
depth was 30 feet a few years ago, and that its sides were solid ice. I
shall have occasion to mention such pits in another glacière; if one
does exist here, it has probably been quarried in the ice by the drops
from the hole in the roof, and there might be some interest attached to
an attempt to investigate it.[17]
We reached S. Georges again in a wretched state of wet and cold, and
Renaud went off to bed, and imbibed abundant and super-abundant
kirsch,--at least, when drawn thence the next morning, his manner left
no doubt about either the fact or the abundance of the potations
overnight. Warned by many experiences, I had gone no nearer to a
specification of the bill of fare than a vague suggestion that
_quelque chose_ must be forthcoming, with an additional stipulation
that this must be something more than mere onions and fat. The
landlady's rendering of _quelque chose_ was very agreeable, but, for
the benefit of future diners _au Cavalier_, it is as well to say that
those who do not like anisette had better make a private arrangement
with their hostess, otherwise they will swallow with their soup an
amount sufficient for many generations of the drag: they may also
safely order savoury rice, with browned veal and wine-sauce, which is
evidently a strong point with the Cavalier. All meals there are
picturesque; for the omelette lay on the Castle of Grandson and a part
of the Lake of Neufchâtel, while the butter reposed on the ruined
Cathedral of Sion, and the honey distilled pleasantly from the comb on
to the walls of Wufflens. No one should put any trust in the spoons,
which are constructed apparently of pewter shavings in a chronic state
of semi-fusion. On the evening of the second day, the landlady allowed
a second knife at tea, as the knife-of-all-work had begun to knock up
under the heavy strain upon its powers; but this supplementary
instrument was of the ornamental kind, and, like other ornamental
things, broke down at a crisis, which took the form of a piece of
crust.
Lest this account should raise anyone's expectations too high, it is as
well to add that they have no snuffers in S. Georges, beyond such as
Nature provided when she gave men fingers; and they burn attenuated
tallow candles with full-bodied wicks. Also, the tea is flavoured with
vanille, unless that precious flavouring is omitted by private contract.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 12: On our previous visit, in 1861, we passed from Arzier
through Longirod and Marchissy, stopping to measure and admire the huge
lime-tree in the churchyard of the latter village. Our Swiss companion
on that occasion was anxious that we should carry home some ice from the
cave; and as the communal law forbade the removal of the ice by
strangers, he hunted up a cousin in Marchissy, and sent him with a
_hotte_ across country, while we went innocently by the ordinary route
through S. Georges. The cousin, however, contrived to lose himself in
the woods, and we never heard of him again.]
[Footnote 13: The size of this basin is exaggerated in the engraving on
page 24, owing to the roughness of the original sketch.]
[Footnote 14: See p. 253.]
[Footnote 15: For further details on this point see pages 54 and 83.]
[Footnote 16: These ladders have at best but little stability, as they
consist of two uprights, careless about the coincidence of the holes,
with bars poked loosely through and left to fall out or stay in as they
choose, the former being the prevailing choice. One of the ladders
happened to be firmer than the generality of its kind; but,
unfortunately, its legs were of unequal lengths, and so it turned round
with one of my sisters, leaving her clinging like a cat to the under
side. When the bars are sufficiently loose, a difference of a few inches
in the lengths of the legs is not of so much importance.]
[Footnote 17: M. Thury found this hole, and fathomed it to a depth of
6-1/2 mètres.]
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