THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ 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 glacière,
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
circumvent 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
glacière; 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
glacière, 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 succumbed 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 assured 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 passed 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 passed 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 glacière! One long bag, with a hole in the middle
like an old-fashioned 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 shivering 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 circumstances, 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 passed 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 breasts were pressed on to the ice, while our
backs scraped against the rock which formed the roof.
[Illustration: SECOND CAVE OF THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S.
LIVRES.]
As soon as this trough was passed, 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
circumference, 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 mass 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
space, 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 cluster 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 glacières, 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
assumes on a tall person.
[Illustration: VERTICAL SECTIONS OF THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ 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
circumstances. 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 assertion 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 glacière, 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 glacières would seem to be exceptions.
Mignot now became communicative as to the amount of ice supplied by his
glacière, 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 tardé a vous écrire les
détails promis, sans doute je ne voulait pas vous oublier; nous sommes
affligés dans nôtre 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
nôtre entretient.
En 1863. Nous avons exploité comme suit. (Dépenses.)
Aoust 27 10 journées pour confectionner les Echelles et les poser.
" 29 3 journées pour couper la glasse.
" 31 11 journées pour sortir la glasse avec les hôtes.
" 31 4 chars a deux chevaux pour ammener
Menés la charge a deux: dès St. Georges a
Septembre 1 Gland plusieurs autres journées pour accompagner
les chars. 70 pots de vin bu
en faisant ces chargements, pour trois
cordes pour se tenir.
Septembre 2 Trois journées pour couper.
le 3 12 journées 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 idée, je veux
vous donner connaissance du coût général des dépences pour deux
chargements s'élève a 535 francs. Je vous donne aussi connaissance de la
quantité de glasse rendue 235 quinteaux a 3 francs, qui produit 705
francs reste net sur ces deux chargements 175 francs: par conséquent mon
cher Monsieur je n'ai pas besoin de vous donner des détails des
chargements suivants c'est a peu près les mêmes frais, et la quantité de
glasse 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 retard.
'Je termine en vous présentant mes respectueuses salutations. Vous
noublierez pas ce que vous mavez promis'[22]St. Georges, le 24 Juillet,
1864. _Dimanche_.
'JULES MIGNOT.'
Instead of three francs the quintal, Mignot had previously told me that
he got four francs, delivered at Gland, and five at Geneva. His ordinary
staff during the time of the exploitation was ten men to carry and load,
and two to cut the ice in the cave.
It was a matter of considerable importance to catch the Poste at
Gimel, and the two Swiss groaned loudly on the consequent pace,
unnecessary, as far as they were concerned, for the Poste was nothing
to them. As a general rule, the Swiss of this district cannot walk so
fast as their Burgundian or French neighbours, unless it is very much
to their interest to do so, and then they can go fast enough. A legend
is still preserved in the valleys of Joux and Les Rousses, to the
following effect. While the Franche Comté was still Spanish, in 1648,
commissioners were appointed to fix the boundaries between Berne and
Burgundy, on the other side of the range of hill we were now
descending, and they decided that one of the boundary stones must be
placed at the distance of a common league from the Lake of Les
Rousses. Unfortunately, no one could say what a common league was,
beyond the vague definition of 'an hour's walk;' so two men were
started from the shore of the lake, the one a Burgundian and the other
a Swiss, with directions to walk for an hour down the Orbe towards
Chenit, the stone to be placed half-way between the points they should
respectively reach at the end of the hour. It was for the interest of
the Franche Comté that the stone should be as near the lake as
possible, and accordingly the Swiss champion made such walking as had
never been seen before, and gained for Berne a considerable amount of
territory. There was no such tragic result in this case as that which
induced the Carthaginians to pay divine honours to the brothers whose
speed, on a like occasion, had added an appreciable amount to the
possessions of the republic.
At length we reached the point where the roads for Gimel and S.
Georges separate, and there, under a glorious sapin, we said our
adieux, and wished our _au revoirs_, and settled those little matters
which the best friends must settle, when one is of the nature of a
monsieur, and the others are guides. They burdened their souls with
many politenesses, and so we parted. The inclemency of the weather was
such, that the people in the lower country asked, as they passed,
whether snow had fallen in the mountains, and the cold rain continued
unceasingly down to the large plain on which the Federal Camp of
Bière[23] is placed. Here for a few moments the sun showed itself,
lighting up the white tents, and displaying to great advantage the
masses of scented orchises, and the feathery _reine-des-prés_, which
hemmed the road in on either side. All through the earlier part of the
day, flowers had forced themselves upon our notice as mere vehicles
for collected rain, when we came in contact with them; but now, for a
short time, they resumed their proper place,--only for a short time,
for the rain soon returned, and did not cease till midnight. Not all
the garden scenery about Aubonne and Allaman (_ad Lemannum_), nor all
the vineyards which yield the choice white wine of the Côte, could
counterbalance the united discomfort of the rain, and the cold which
had got into the system in the two glacières; and matters were not
mended by the discovery that _Bradshaw_ was treacherous, and that a
junction with dry baggage at Neufchâtel could not be effected before
eleven at night.
There are some curious natural phenomena in this neighbourhood, due to
the subterranean courses which the fissured limestone of the Jura
affords to the meteoric waters. Not far from Bière, the river Aubonne
springs out at the bottom of an amphitheatre of rock, receiving
additions soon after from a group of twenty natural pits, which the
peasants call unfathomable--an epithet freely applied to the strange
holes found in the Jura. It is remarkable that the way seems to stand
at different levels in the various pits.[24] The plain of Champagne,
in which they occur, is unlike the surrounding soil in being formed of
calcareous detritus, evidently brought down by some means or other
from the Jura, and is dry and parched up to the very edges of the
pits. The Toleure, a tributary of the Aubonne, frequently large enough
to be called a confluent, flows out from the foot of a wall of rock
composed of regular parallelopipeds, and in the spring, when the snows
are melting freely, its sources burst out at various levels of the
rock. Farther to the west, the Versoie, famous for its trout, pours
forth a full-sized stream near the Château of Divonne, which is said
to take its name (_Divorum unda_) from this phenomenon. Passing to the
northern slope of this range of the Jura, the Orbe is a remarkable
example of the same sort of thing, flowing out peacefully in very
considerable bulk from an arch at the bottom of a perpendicular rock
of great height. This river no doubt owes its origin to the
superfluous waters of the Lake of Brenets, which have no visible
outlet, and sink into fissures and _entonnoirs_ in the rock at the
edge of the lake. Notwithstanding that the lake is three-quarters of a
league distant, horizontally, and nearly 700 feet higher, the belief
had always been that it was the source of the stream, and in 1776 this
was proved to be the fact. For some years before that date, the waters
of the Lake of Joux had been inconveniently high, and the people
determined to clean out the _entonnoirs_ and fissures of the Lake of
Brenets, which is only separated from the Lake of Joux by a narrow
tongue of land, in the expectation that the water would then pass away
more freely. In order to reach the fissures, they dammed up the outlet
of the upper into the lower lake; but the pressure on the embankment
became too great, and the waters burst through with much violence,
creating an immense disturbance in the lake; and the Orbe, which had
always been perfectly clear, was troubled and muddy for some little
time. The source of the Loue, near Pontarlier, is more striking than
even that of the Orbe.[25]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: A point common to the two sections, which are made by
planes nearly at right angles to each other.]
[Footnote 22: The dimensions of the two caves, and of the various masses
of ice.]
[Footnote 23: The Cartulary of Lausanne states that the wealthy village
of Bière received its name from the following historical fact:--In 522,
the Bishop of Lausanne, S. Prothais, was superintending the cutting of
wood in the Jura for his cathedral, when he died suddenly, and was
carried down on a litter to a place where a proper _bier_ could he
procured, whence the place was named Bière.]
[Footnote 24: The most curious pit of this kind is the _frais-puits_ of
Vesoul, in the Vosgian Jura, which pours forth immense quantities of
water after rain has fallen in the neighbourhood. The water rushes out
in the shape of a fountain, and on one occasion, in November 1557, saved
the town of Vesoul from pillage by a passing army. This pit is carefully
described by M. Hassenfratz, in the _Journal de Physique_, t. xx. p. 259
(an. 1782), where he says that Cæsar was driven away from the town of
Vesoul, which he had intended to besiege, by the floods of water poured
forth from the _frais-puits_. I know of no such incident in Cæsar's
life, though M. Hassenfratz quotes Cæsar's own words: the town of
Vesoul, too, had no historical existence before the 9th or 10th century
of our era. There is also a pit near Vesoul which contains icicles in
summer, and may be the same as the _frais-puits_, for the old historian
of Franche Comté, Gollut, in describing the latter, mentions that it is
so cold that no one cares to explore it (pp. 91. 92).]
[Footnote 25: See p. 122.]
* * * * *