THE SCHAFLOCH, OR TROU-AUX-MOUTONS, NEAR THE LAKE OF THUN.
The next morning, my sisters went one way and I another; they to a
valley in the south-west of Vaud, where our head-quarters were to be
established for some weeks, and I to Soleure, where a Swiss _savant_ had
vaguely told us he believed there was a glacière to be seen. That town,
however, denied the existence of any approach to such a thing, with a
unanimity which in itself was suspicious, and with a want of imagination
which I had not expected to find. One man I really thought might be
persuaded to know of some cave where there was or might be ice, but
after a quarter of an hour's discussion he finally became immovable on
the negative side. A Frenchman would certainly have been polite enough
to accommodate facts to my desires. It was all the more annoying,
because the Weissenstein stood overhead so engagingly, and I should have
been only too glad to spend the night in the hotel there, if anyone had
given me the slightest encouragement. I specially pointed at the
neighbourhood of this hotel to my doubtful friend, as being likely for
caves; but he was not in the pay of the landlord, and so failed to take
the hint. There is a curious hole in which ice is found near
Weissenstein in Carniola,[55] and it is not impossible that this may
have originated the idea of a glacière near Soleure.
The Schweizerhof at Berne is a very comfortable resting-place; but, in
spite of its various excellences, if a tired traveller is told that No.
53 is to be his room, he will do well to seek a bed elsewhere. No. 53 is
a sort of closet to some other number, with a single window opening low
on to the passage, and is adjudged to the unfortunate individual who
arrives at that omnipresent crisis which raises the charge for
bed-rooms, and silences all objections to their want of comfort--namely,
when there is only one bed left in the house. In itself, No. 53 would be
well enough; but the throne of the chambermaid is in the passage, by the
side of the window, and the male attendant on that particular stage
naturally gravitates to the same point, when the bells of the stage do
not summon him elsewhere, and often enough when they do. This
combination leads of course to local disturbances of a somewhat noisy
character, and however entirely a sleepy man may in principle sympathise
with the causes of the noise, it becomes rather hard to bear after
midnight. The precise actors on the present occasion have, no doubt,
quarrelled or set up a _café_ before now, or perhaps have achieved both
results by taking the latter first; but there is reason to believe that
so long as the window of No. 53 is the seat of the chambermaid for the
time being, so long will that room be--as the landlord neatly expressed
it when a protest was made--_etwas unruhig_.
All Switzerland has been playing at soldiers for some time, and as we
left Berne the next morning, we saw three or four hundred Federal men of
war marching down the road which runs parallel with the rails. The three
officers at the head of the column were elderly and stout; moreover,
they were mounted, and that fact was evidently due rather to the
meekness of their chargers than to the grip of their own legs. When they
saw the train coming, they took prompt measures. They halted the troops,
and rode off down a side lane to be out of harm's way; and when we had
well passed, they rejoined the column, and the march was resumed.
The early train from Berne catches the first boat on the Lake of Thun,
and I landed at the second station on the lake, the village of Gonten or
Gunten. M. Thury's list states that the glacière known as the Schafloch
is on the Rothhorn, in the Canton of Berne, 4,500 mètres of horizontal
distance from Merligen, a village on the shore of the lake; and from
these data I was to find the cave. Gonten was apparently the nearest
station to Merligen, and as soon as the small boat which meets the
steamer had deposited me on the shore, I asked my way, first to the
_auberge_, and then to Merligen. The _auberge_ was soon found, and
coffee and bread were at once ordered for breakfast; but when the people
learned my eventual destination, they would not let me go to Merligen. A
man, to whom--for no particular reason--I had given two-pence, called a
council of the village upon me, and they proceeded to determine whether
I must have a guide from Gonten, or only from a nameless châlet higher
up. The discussion was noisy, and was conducted without words: they do
not speak, those men of Gonten--they merely grunt, and each interprets
the grunts as he wills. My two-penny friend told me what it all meant,
in an obliging manner, but in words less intelligible than the grunts;
and one member of the council drew out so elaborate a route--the very
characters being wild patois--splitting the morning into quarter-stundes
and half-quarter-stundes, with a sharp turn to the right or left at the
end of each, that, as I drank my coffee, I determined to take a guide
from the village, whatever the decision of the council might be.
Fortunately, things took a right turn, and when breakfast was finished,
a deputation went out and found a guide, suspiciously like one of their
number who did not return, and I was informed that Christian Opliger
would conduct me to the Schafloch for five francs, and a _Trinkgeld_ if
I were satisfied with him. In order to prove to me that he had really
been at the cave, six days before, with two Bernese gentlemen, he seized
my favourite low-crowned white hat, and endeavoured to knead it into the
shape of the cave.
Our affairs took a long time to arrange, for grunts and pantomime are
not rapid means of communication, when it comes to detail. The great
question in Christian's mind seemed to be, what should we take with us
to eat and drink? and when he propounded this to me with steady
pertinacity, I, with equal pertinacity, had only one answer--a cord and
a hatchet. At last he provided these, vowing that they were ridiculously
unnecessary, but comprehending that they must be forthcoming, as a
preliminary to anything more digestible; and then I told him, some dry
bread and no wine. This drove him from grunts to words. No wine! it
would be so frightfully hot on the mountains!--I told him I never drank
wine when I was hot. But it would be so terribly cold in the cave!--I
never drank wine when I was cold. But the climbing was _sehr stark_--we
should need to give ourselves strength!--I never needed to give myself
strength. There was no good water to be found the whole way!--I never
drank water. Then, at last, after a brief grunt with the landlord, he
struck:--he simply would not go without wine! I never wished him to do
so, I explained; he might take as much as he chose, and I would pay for
it, but he need not count me for anything in calculating how much was
necessary. This made him perfectly happy; and when I answered his
question touching cheese in a similar manner, only limiting him to a
pound and a half, he rushed off for a large wicker _hotte_, spacious
enough for the stowage of many layers of babies; and in it he packed all
our properties, and all his provisions. The landlord had made his own
calculations, and put it at 3lbs. of bread and 2lbs. of cheese; but I
cut down the bread on account of its bulk, before I saw the size of the
_hotte_, and Christian seemed to think he had quite enough to carry.
It was about half-past nine when we started from the _auberge_; and
after a short mount in the full sun, we were not sorry to reach the
pleasant shade of walnut trees which accompanied us for a considerable
distance. The blue lake lay at our feet on the right, and beyond it the
Niesen stood, with wonted grandeur, guarding its subject valleys; more
in front, as we ascended transversely, the well-known snow-peaks of the
Bernese Oberland glittered high above the nearer foreground, and, sheer
above us, on the left, rose the ragged precipices whose flank we were to
turn. The Rothhorn of the Canton Berne lies inland from the Lake of
Thun, and sends down towards the lake a ridge sufficiently lofty,
terminating in the Ralligstöcke, or Ralligflue, the needle-like point,
so prettily ridged with firs, which advances its precipitous sides to
the water. These precipices were formed in historic times, and the sheer
face from which half a mountain has been torn stands now as clear and
fresh as ever, while a chaos of vast blocks at its foot gives a point to
the local legends of devastation and ruin caused by the various
berg-falls. Two such falls are clearly marked by the _débris_: one of
these, a hundred and fifty years ago, reduced the town of Ralligen to a
solitary Schloss; and the other, in 1856, overwhelmed the village of
Merligen, and converted its rich pastures into a desert cropped with
stones. A traveller in Switzerland, at the beginning of this century,
found that the inhabitants of Merligen were considered in the
neighbourhood to be _d'une stupidité et d'une bêtise extrêmes_, and I
am inclined to believe that after the last avalanche a general migration
to Gonten must have taken place.
Christian's patois was of so hopeless a description, that I was tempted
to give it up in despair, and walk on in silence. Still, as we were
together for a whole long day, for better or for worse, it seemed worth
while to make every effort to understand each other, else I could learn
no local tales and legends, and Christian would earn but little
_Trinkgeld_; so we struggled manfully against our difficulties. A
confident American lady, meditating Europe, and knowing little French
and no German, is said to have remarked jauntily that if the worst came
to the worst she could always talk on her fingers to the peasants; but I
did not attempt to avail myself of the results of early practice in that
universal language. Christian's answers--the more intelligible parts of
them--were a stratified succession of _yes_ and _no_, and as he was a
man naturally polite and acquiescent, the assentient strata were of more
frequent occurrence; but of course, beyond showing his good-will, such
answers were of no practical value. At length, after long perseverance,
we were rewarded by the appearance of a curiosity which eventually gave
each the key to the other's cipher. This was a strong stream of water,
flowing out of the trunk of a growing tree, at a height of six feet or
so from the ground; and I was so evidently interested in the phenomenon,
that Christian exerted himself to the utmost, at last with success, to
explain the construction of the fountain. A healthy poplar, seven or
eight years old, is taken from its native soil, and a cold iron borer is
run up the heart of the trunk from the roots, for six feet or more, by
which means the pith is removed, and the trunk is made to assume the
character of a pipe. A hole is then bored through from the outside of
the trunk, to communicate with the highest point reached by the former
operation, and in this second hole a spout is fixed. The same is done
at a very short distance above the root, in the part of the trunk which
will be buried in the earth when the tree is replanted, and the poplar
is then fixed in damp ground, with the pipe at its root in connection
with one of the little runs of water which abound in meadows at the foot
of hills. A well-known property of fluids produces then the strange
effect of an unceasing flow of water from an iron spout in the trunk of
a living tree; and, as poplars love water, the fountain-tree thrives,
and is more vigorous than its neighbours. This sort of fountain may be
common in some parts of Switzerland, but I have not seen them myself
except in this immediate neighbourhood. There is said to be one near
Stachelberg.
In the endeavour to explain all this to me, Christian succeeded so
perfectly, that for the rest of the day we understood each other very
well. When I told him that he spoke much better German than the rest of
the people in Gonten, he informed me that he had worked among
foreigners, in proof whereof he held out his fingers; but all that I
could gather from the invited inspection was, that, whatever his
employment might have been, he could not be said to have come out of it
with clean hands. He had been employed, he explained, in German
dye-works, and there had learned something better than the native
patois. About this time, too, I was able to make him understand that, as
he carried more than I, he must call a halt whenever he felt so
inclined; upon which he patted me affectionately on the back, and, if I
could remember the word he used, I believe that I should now know the
Swiss-German for a brick.
Our object was to pass along the side of the lake, at a considerable
elevation, till we reached the east side of the Rothhorn range, when we
were to turn up the Jüstisthal, and mount towards the highest point of
the ridge, the glacière lying about an hour below the summit, in the
face of the steep rock. The cliffs became very grand on either side, as
soon as we entered this valley, the Jüstisthal, especially the
precipices of the Beatenberg on the right; and our path lay through
woods which have sprung up on the site of an early _Berg-lauine._ The
guide-books call attention to a cavern with a curious intermittent
spring in this neighbourhood. English tourists should feel some interest
in the Cave of S. Beatus, inasmuch as its canonised occupant went from
our shores to preach the Gospel to the wild men of the district, and
died in this cave at a very advanced age. His relics remaining there,
his fête-day attracted such crowds of pilgrims, that reforming Berne
sent two deputies in 1528 to carry off the saint's skull, and bury it
between the lakes; but still the pilgrimages continued, and at length
the Protestant zeal of Berne went to the expense of a wall, and they
built the pilgrims out in 1566. S. Beatus is said to have been converted
by S. Barnabas in Britain, and to have gone to Rome, whence S. Peter
sent him out to preach. His relics were conveyed to Lucerne in 1554,
because heresy prevailed in the country where his cave lies, and an arm
is among the proud possessions of pilgrim-pressed Einsiedeln. The saint
was originally a British noble, by name Suetonius; and Dempster drops a
letter from his name, and with much ingenuity makes him collateral
ancestor of a Scottish family--'The Setons, tall and proud.'[56]
When we arrived at the last châlet, Christian turned to mount the grass
slope on our left hand, which led to the part of the rocks in which the
entrance to the Schafloch was to be sought. I never climbed up grass so
steep, and before we had gone very far we were hailed by a succession of
grunts, which my companion interpreted into assurances from some
invisible person that we were going wrong. The man soon appeared, in the
shape of a charcoal-burner, and told us that we were making the ascent
much more difficult than it need be made, and also, that we should come
to some awkward rock-climbing by the route we had chosen. It was too
late, however, to turn back; so we persevered.
Before long, I heard a _Meinherr_! from Christian, in a tone which I
knew meant rest and some food. He explained that he would rather take
two small refreshments, one here and one at the Schafloch, than one
large refreshment at the cave; so we propped ourselves on the grass, and
tapped the _hotte_. The cheese proved to be delightful--six years old,
the landlady told us afterwards, and apparently as hard as a bone, but
when once mastered its flavour was admirable. Christian persuaded me to
taste the wine, of which he had a high opinion, and he was electrified
by the universal shudder the one taste caused. The grapes from which it
was brewed had been grown in a gooseberry garden, and all the saccharine
matter carefully extracted; the wine had been left without a cork since
the first dawn of its existence, and the heat and jolting of its travels
on Christian's back had reduced it to the condition of warm flat
vinegar. He drank it with the utmost relish, and was evidently
reconciled to my verdict by the consideration that there would be all
the more for him.
From the appearance of the bread and cheese when the meal had come to an
end, I concluded that my companion had changed his mind in the course of
feeding, and had resolved to compress the whole eating of the day into
one large refreshment here. The consumptive powers of the Swiss-German
peasant, when his meal is franked, has not unfrequently reminded me of
the miraculous eating performed by a yellow domino of that nation, at
the fête by which Louis XIV. celebrated the second marriage of the
Dauphin. This domino was of large size, and ate and drank voraciously
throughout the entertainment, which lasted many hours, retiring every
five minutes or so, and returning speedily with unabated appetite. The
thing became at length so portentous, that enquiries were instituted,
and it was found that the trusty _Cent-Suisses_ had joined at a domino,
and were drawing lots all through the evening for the next turn at
eating; so that each man's time was necessarily limited, and he
accordingly made the most of it.
We soon took to the rocks, and found them, as the charcoal-burner had
promised, sufficiently stiff work. Colonel (now General) Dufour visited
the Schafloch with a party of officers in 1822, and he describes[57] the
path as a dangerous one, so much so that several of the gallant members
of his party could not reach the cave: he uses rather large words about
the precipices, and it is a matter of observation that military service
on the Continent tends to induce a habit of body which is not the most
suitable for doubtful climbing. The mountain seemed to be composed, in
this part, of horizontal layers of crumbling shale, with a layer now and
then of stone, about the thickness of an ordinary house-tile. The stone
layers project from the looser masonry, and afford an excellent
foot-hold; but a slip might be unpleasant. Every one who has done even a
small amount of climbing has met with an abundance of places where 'a
slip would be certain death,' as people are so fond of saying; but
equally he has discovered that a slip is the last thing he thinks of
making in such situations. Christian had told me that if I had the
slightest tendency to _Schwindelkopf_, I must not go by the improvised
route; but it proved that there were really no precipices at all, much
less any of sufficient magnitude to turn an ordinary head dizzy. He
chose these rocks as the text for a long sermon on the necessity for
great caution when we should arrive at the cave, telling of an
Englishman who had tried to visit it two years before, and had cut his
knee so badly with his guide's axe that he had to be carried down the
mountain to Gonten, and thence to the steamer for Thun, in which town he
lay for many weeks in the hands of the German doctor; this last
assertion being by no means incredible. Also, of a native who attempted
the cave alone, and, making one false step near the top of a fall of
ice, slipped down and down almost for ever, and finally landed with
broken limbs on a floor of ice, where he was found, two days after,
frozen stiff, but still alive.
It was not necessary to mount much, for we were almost as high as the
mouth of the cave, according to Christian's belief, and our work
consisted chiefly in passing along the face of the rock, round
projecting buttresses and re-entering angles, till we reached that part
of the mountain where we might expect to find our glacière. While we
were thus engaged, two hoarse and ominous ravens took us under their
charge, and accompanied us with unpleasant screams, which argued the
proximity of food or nest. We soon found that we had disturbed their
meal, for we came to marks of blood, and saw that some animal had
slipped on the rocks above, and landed on the ledge on which we were
walking, bounding off again on to a shelf below, where the ravens had
already torn the body to pieces. I must confess to a very considerable
shudder when we discovered the reason of their screams, and neither of
us seemed to enjoy the circling and croaking of the unclean birds.
Very soon after this, Christian announced that we had reached the cave,
and a steep little climb of six feet or so brought us to the entrance.
Here we were haunted still by the presence of pieces of the fallen goat,
which lay about here and there on the ground; and the flutter of wings
overhead explained to us that the old ravens had built their nest in the
mouth of the cave, and had brought morsels of raw flesh to their young
ones, which were scarcely able to fly. I am ashamed to say that we were
so angry with the old birds for shrieking so suggestively in our ears,
and parading before us the results of a slip on the rocks, that we
charged ourselves with stones, and put an end to the most noisy member
of the foul brood; Christian making some of the worst shots it is
possible to conceive, and raining blocks of stone and lumps of wood in
all directions, with such reckless impartiality, that the only safe
place seemed to be between him and the bird. One of us, at least,
regretted the useless cruelty as soon as it was perpetrated, and it came
back upon me very reproachfully at an awkward part of our return
journey.
The Schafloch does not take its name from the bones contained in it, as
is the case with the Kühloch in Franconia,[58] but from the fact that
when a sudden storm comes on, the sheep and goats make their way to the
cave for shelter, never, I was told, going so far as the commencement of
the ice. The entrance faces ESE., and is of large size, with a low wall
built partly across it to increase the shelter for the sheep: Dufour
calls the entrance 50 feet wide and 25 feet high, but I found the width
at the narrowest part, a few yards within the entrance, to be 33
feet.[59] For a short distance the cave passes horizontally into the
rock, in a westerly direction, and is quite light; it then turns sharp
to the south, the floor beginning to fall, and candles becoming
necessary. Here the height increases considerably, and the way lies over
a wild confusion of loose masses of rock, which have apparently fallen
from the roof, and make progression very difficult. We soon reached a
point where ice began to appear among the stones; and as we advanced it
became more and more prominent, till at length we lost sight of the
rock, and stood on solid ice.
On either side of the cave was a grand column of ice forming the
portal, as it were, through which we must pass to further beauties.
The ice-floor rose to meet these columns in a graceful swelling curve,
perfectly continuous, so that the general effect was that of two
columns whose roots expanded and met in the middle of the cave; and,
indeed, that may have been really the order of formation. The
right-hand column was larger than its fellow, but, owing to the more
gradual expansion of the lower part of its height, and the steepness
of the consequent slope, we were unable to measure its girth at any
point where it could be fairly called a column. Christian had been in
the cave a few days before, and he assured me that the swelling base
of this column had increased very considerably since his last visit,
pointing out a solid surface of ice, at one part of our track, where
he had before walked on bare rock. The cave was by no means extremely
cold, that is to say, it was rather above than below the freezing
point, and the splashing of drops of water was audible on all sides;
so that, if Christian spoke the truth,--it was sad to be so often
reminded of Legree's plaintive soliloquy in the opening pages of
'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'--the explanation, I suppose, might be that the
drops of water, falling on the top of the column or stalagmite, run
down the sides, and carry with them some melted portion from the upper
part of the column, and after a course of a few yards become so far
refrigerated as to form ice.[60] The pillar on the left was more
approachable, but we were unable to determine its dimensions; for on
the outer side, where it stood a few feet or yards clear of the side
of the cave, the rounded ice at its foot fell off at once into a dark
chasm, a sort of smooth enticing _Bergschrund_, which we did not care
to face. Christian declared that this column was not so high as it was
a day or two before, which may go to support the theory expressed
above, or at least that part of it which depends upon the supposition
of water dropping on to the head of the column, and melting certain
portions of it.
If we were unable to take the external dimensions of this column, I
had no doubt that we should find internal investigations interesting;
so, to Christian's surprise, I began to chop a hole in it, about two
feet from the ground, and, having made an entrance sufficiently large,
proceeded to get into the cavity which presented itself. The flooring
of the dome-shaped grotto in which I found myself, was loose rock, at
a level about two feet below the surface of the ice-floor on which
Christian still stood. The dome itself was not high enough to allow me
to stand upright, and from the roof, principally from the central
part, a complex mass of delicate icicles passed down to the floor,
leaving a narrow burrowing passage round, which was itself invaded by
icicles from the lower part of the sloping roof, and by stubborn
stalagmites of ice rising from the floor.[61] The details of this
central cluster of icicles, and in fact of every portion of the
interior of the strange grotto, were exceedingly lovely, and I crushed
with much regret, on hands and knees, through fair crystal forests and
frozen dreams of beauty. In making the tour of this grotto, contorting
my body like a snake to get in and out among the ice-pillars, and do
as little damage as might be, but yet, with all my care, accompanied
by the incessant shiver and clatter of breaking and falling ice, I
came to a hole in the ground, too dark and deep for one candle to show
its depth; so I called to Christian to come in, thinking that two
candles might show it better. He asked if I really meant it, and
assured me he could be of no use; but I told him that he must come,
and informed him that he, being the smaller man, would find the
passage quite easy. It was very fortunate that I had not waited a
minute longer before summoning him, for just as he had dropped into
the hollow, and was beginning his journey to the side where I now was,
a drop of water and a simultaneous icicle came upon my candle, and
left me in darkness, curled up like a dormouse in a nest of ice, at
the edge of the newly discovered shaft; while my troubles were brought
to a climax by an incursion of icy drops, which had me at their mercy.
If all this had happened while Christian was still outside, he would
probably have staid there wringing his hands till it was time to go
home, and I should certainly not have liked to move without a light.
As it was, I did not inform him of the catastrophe, but let him come
toiling on, wondering audibly what madness could drive Herrschaft into
such places; and when he arrived, we cut off the wet wick, and lighted
the candle again. We could make nothing of the hole, so he returned by
the way he had come, and I completed the tour of the grotto, finding
the same difficult passage, and the same ice beauties, all the way
round.
Having squeezed ourselves out again through the narrow hole, we now
passed between the two gigantic columns, and found that the sea of ice
became still broader and bolder. I much regret that I neglected to take
any measurements in this part of the cave; but farther down, where it
was certainly not so broad, I found the width of the ice to be 75 feet.
It was throughout of the crystalline character which prevails in all the
large masses in the glacières I have visited. For some distance beyond
the columns, we found neither stalactites nor stalagmites--indeed, I
forgot to look at the roof--until we came to the edge of a glorious
ice-fall, down which Christian said it was impossible to go--no one had
ever been farther than where we now stood. I have seen no subterranean
ice-fall so grand as this, round and smooth, and perfectly unbroken,
passing down, like the rapids of some river too deep for its surface to
be disturbed, into darkness against which two candles prevailed nothing.
The fall in the Upper Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres was strange
enough, but it was very small, and led to a confined corner of the
cavern; whereas this of the Schafloch rolls down majestically, cold and
grey, into a dark gulf of which we could see neither the roof nor the
end, while the pieces of ice which we despatched down the steep slope
could be heard going on and on, as M. Soret says, _à une très-grande
distance_. The shape, also, of the fall was very striking. Beginning at
the left wall of the cave, the edge ran out obliquely towards the
middle, when it suddenly turned and struck straight across to the
right-hand wall, so that we were able to stand on a tongue, as it were,
in the middle of the top of the fall. To add to the effect, precisely
from this tongue or angle a fine column of ice sprang out of the very
crest of the fall, rising to or towards the roof, and to this we clung
to peer down into the darkness.
The rope we had brought was not long, and the idea was hopeless of
cutting steps down this great fall, leading we knew not where, with an
incline which it frightened Christian even to look at. I began to
consider, however, whether it was not possible to make our way down the
left branch of the ice, which fell rather towards the side wall than
into the dark gulf below. On examining more closely, I found that a
large stone, or piece of rock, projected from the face of this branch of
the fall, about 12 feet from the top, and to this I determined to
descend, as a preliminary to further attempts, the candles not showing
us what there was beyond. Accordingly, I tied on the rope, and planted
Christian where he had a safe footing, telling him to hold tight if I
slipped, for he seemed to have little idea what the rope was meant for.
The ice was very hard, and cutting steps downwards with a short axe is
not easy work; so when I came within 3 or 4 feet of the rock, I forgot
the rope, and set off for a short glissade. Christian, of course,
thought something was wrong, and very properly put a prompt strain upon
the rope, which reduced his Herr to a spread-eagle sort of condition, in
which it was difficult to explain matters, so as to procure a release.
When that was accomplished, I saw it would be easy to reach the point
where the ice met the wall, so I called to Christian to come down, which
he did in an unpremeditated, avalanche fashion; and then, by cutting
steps here and there, and making use of odd points of rock, we skirted
down the edge of the great fall, and reached at last the lower regions.
When I came to read Dufour's account of his visit in 1822, I found that
the ice must have increased very much since his time. He uses
sufficiently large words, speaking of the _vaste, horrible et pourtant
magnifique_--of the _horreur du séjour_, and the _grandeur des demeures
souterraines_; but he only calls the glorious ice-fall a _plan incliné_,
and says that the whole was less remarkable for the amount of ice, than
for the characteristics indicated by the words I have quoted. He says
that it required _une assez forte dose de courage_ to slip down to the
stone of which I have spoken; the fact being that at the time of my
visit it would have been impossible to do so with any chance of stopping
oneself, for the flat surface of the stone was all but even with the
ice. M. Soret, who saw the cave in 1860, determined that cords were then
absolutely necessary for the descent, which he did not attempt; and the
only Englishman I have met who has seen this cave, tells me that he and
his party went no farther than the edge of the fall.[62] Probably each
year's accumulation on the upper floor of ice has added to the height
and rapidity of the fall; but at any rate, when Dufour was there, _des
militaires_--as he dashingly tells--were not to be stopped, and he and
his party--such of them as had not been already stopped by the
precipices outside--let themselves slip down to the stone, and thence
descended as we did.
We soon found that the larger ice-fall looked extremely grand when seen
from below, and that in a modified form it reached far down into the
lower cave, and terminated in a level sea of ice; but, before making any
further investigations into its size, we pressed on to look for the end
of the cave. This soon appeared, and as a commentary on Christian's
assertion that no one had ever been beyond the head of the fall, I
called his attention to some initials smoked on the wall by means of a
torch. There was an abrupt piece of rock-floor between this end and the
termination of the ice. The western wall was ornamented with a long
arcade of lofty columns of very white ice, looking strangely ghostlike
by the light of two candles, crystallised, and with the porcelain
appearance I have described before. We could not measure the height of
these columns, but we found that they extended continuously, so as to be
in fact one sheet of columns, connected by shapes of ice now graceful
and now grotesque, for 27 yards. The ice from their feet flowed down to
join the terminal lake, which formed a weird sea 28 yards by 14. My
notes, written on the spot, tell me that between this lake, which I have
called terminal, and the end of the cave, there is a sheet of ice 48
yards long, but it has entirely vanished from my recollection.
I now sent Christian back with a ball of string, up the steps we had cut
for the descent, with directions to get as near as he could to the top
of the main fall, and then send down a stone tied to the string, as I
wished to determine the length of the fall. While he was making his way
up, I amused myself by chopping and carving at the ice at various
points to examine its structure, until at length a _Jodel_ from above
announced that Christian had reached his post; and a vast amount of
hammering ensued, of which I could not understand the meaning. Presently
he called out that 'it' was coming, and assuredly it did come. There was
a loud crash on the upper part of the fall, and a shower of fragments of
ice came whizzing past, and almost dislodged me; while the sound of
pieces of ice bounding and gliding down the slope seemed as if it never
would cease. It turned out to mean that my friend had not been able to
find a stone; so he had smashed a block of ice from the column which
presided over the fall, and having attached the string to this, had
hurled the whole apparatus in my direction, fortunately not doing as
much damage as he might have done. My end of the string was not to be
seen, so he repeated the experiment, with a piece of wood in place of
the block of ice, and this time it succeeded. We found that from top to
bottom of the fall was 45 yards. There was all the appearance of immense
thickness, especially towards the upper part.
Christian had placed his candle in a niche in the column, while he
arranged the string for measuring the fall, and the effect of the spark
of light at the top of the long steep slope was extremely strange from
below. The whole scene was so remarkable, that it required some effort
to realise the fact that I was not in a dream. Christian stood at the
top invisible, jodeling in a most unearthly manner, and developing an
astonishing falsetto power, only interrupting his performance to assure
me that he was not coming down again; so I was obliged to measure the
breadth of the fall by myself. I chose a part where the ice was not very
steep, and where occasional points of rock would save some of the labour
of cutting steps; but even so it was a sufficiently tedious business.
The string was always catching at something, and mere progression,
without any string to manage, would have been difficult enough under the
circumstances. It was completely dark, so a candle occupied one hand,
and, as every step must be cut, save where an opportune rock or stone
appeared, an axe occupied the other; then there was the string to be
attended to, and both hands must be ready to clutch at some projecting
point when a slip came, and now and then a ruder rock required
circumvention. Add to all this, that hands and feet had not been
rendered more serviceable by an hour and a half of contact with ice, and
it will easily be understood that I was glad when the measurement was
over. At this point the breadth was 25 yards, and, a few feet above the
line in which I crossed, all traces of rock or stone disappeared, and
there was nothing but unbroken ice. I had of course abundant
opportunities for examining the structure of the ice, and I found in all
parts of the fall the same large-grained material, breaking up, when
cut, into the usual prismatic nuts.
I now rejoined Christian, and we worked our way upwards to the mouth of
the cave, penitently desisting from stoning a remaining raven. We
observed at the very mouth, by watching the flame of the candles, a
slight current outwards, extremely feeble, and on our first arrival I
had fancied there was a current, equally slight, inwards, but neither
was perceptible beyond the entrance of the cave. M. Soret was fortunate
enough to witness a curious phenomenon, at the time of his visit to the
Schafloch, in September 1860, which throws some light upon the
atmospheric state of the cave. The day was externally very foggy, and
the fog had penetrated into the cavern; but as soon as M. Soret began to
descend to the glacière itself, properly so called, he passed down out
of the fog, and found the air for the rest of the way perfectly
clear.[63]
M. Soret states that he has not absolute confidence in his
thermometrical observations, but as he had more time than I to devote to
such details, inasmuch as he did not pass down into the lowest part of
the cave, I give his results rather than my own, which were carelessly
made on this occasion:--On a stone near the first column of ice,
0°·37 C.; on a stick propped against the column on the edge of the great
ice-fall, 2°·37 C.; in a hole in the ice, filled with water by drops
from the roof, 0° C. approximately.[64] The second result is
sufficiently remarkable. My own observations would give nearer 33° F.
than 32° as the general temperature of the cave.
Christian was so cold when we had finished our investigations, that he
determined to take his second refreshment _en route_, and, moreover,
time was getting rather short. We had started from Gonten at half-past
nine in the morning, and reached the glacière about half-past twelve.
It was now three o'clock, and the boat from Gonten must reach the
steamer at half-past six precisely, so there was not too much time for
us; especially as we were to return by a more mountainous route, which
involved further climbing towards the summit of the Rothhorn, and was
to include a visit to the top of the Ralligflue. On emerging from the
cave, we were much struck by the beauty of the view, the upper half of
the Jungfrau, with its glittering attendants and rivals, soaring above
a rich and varied foreground not unworthy of so glorious a
termination. There was not time, however, to admire it as it deserved,
and we set off almost at once up the rocks, soon reaching a more
elevated table-land by dint of steep climbing. The ground of this
table-land was solid rock, smoothed and rounded by long weathering,
and fissured in every direction by broad and narrow crevasses 2 or 3
feet deep, at the bottom of which was luxuriant botany, in the shape
of ferns, and mallows, and monkshood, and all manner of herbs. The
learned in such matters call these rock-fallows _Karrenfelden_. When
we had crossed this plateau, and came to grass, we found a gorgeous
carpet of the huge couched blue gentian (_G. acaulis_, Fr. _Gentiane
sans tige_), with smaller patterns put in by the dazzling blue of the
delicate little flower of the same species (_G. verna_ ); while the
white blossoms of the grass of Parnassus, and the frailer white of the
_dryade à huit petales_, and the modest waxen flowers of the _Azalea
procumbens_ and the _airelle ponctuée_ (_Vaccineum vitis idaea_),
tempered and set off the prevailing blue. There were groves, too,
rather lower down, of Alpine roses (the first I had come across that
year), not the fringed or the green-backed species which botanists
love best, but the honest old rust-backed rhododendron, which every
Swiss traveller has been pestered with in places where the children
are one short step above mere mendicity, but, equally, which every
Swiss traveller hails with Medean delight when he comes upon it on the
mountain-side. We were now, too, in the neighbourhood of the first
created Alpen rose. The story is, that a young peasant, who had
climbed the precipices behind Oberhausen for rock-flowrets, as the
price of some maiden's love, fell at the moment when he had secured
the flowers, and was killed. From his blood the true Alpen rose
sprang, and took its colour.
We were now passing along the summit of one of the lower spurs of the
Rothhorn range, and making for the peak of the Ralligflue, which lay
considerably below us. In descending near the line of crest, we found a
large number of very deep fissures, narrow and black, some of them
extending to a great distance across the face of the hill; sometimes
they appeared as mere holes, down which we despatched stones, sometimes
as unpleasant crevasses almost hidden by flowers and the shrubs of
rhododendron. In many of these we dimly discovered accumulated snow at
the bottom, and we observed that the Alpine roses which overhung the
snow-holes were by far the deepest coloured and most beautiful we could
find.
To reach the Ralligflue, we had to cross a smooth green lawn completely
covered with the sweet vanilla orchis (_O. nigra_), which perfumed the
air almost too powerfully. No one can ever fully appreciate the grandeur
of the lion-like Niesen till he has seen it from this verdant little
paradise, on the slope near the Bergli Châlet, with a diminutive limpid
lake in the meadow at his feet, and the blue lake of Thun below. The
Kanderthal and the Simmenthal lie exposed from their entrance at the
foot of the Niesen; and when the winding Kanderthal is lost, the
Adelbodenthal takes up the telescope, and guides the eye to the parent
glaciers. This view I was fortunately able to enjoy rather longer than
that from the mouth of the Schafloch; for we had made such rapid way,
that Christian found there was time for a meal of milk in the châlet,
and meanwhile left me lying in perfect luxury on the sweet grass.
From the Ralligflue a long and remarkably steep zigzag leads to the
lower ground, and down this Christian ran at full speed, jodeling in a
most trying manner; indeed, at one of the sudden turns of the path he
went off triumphantly into a falsetto so unearthly, that he lost his
legs, and landed in a promiscuous sort of way on a lower part of the
zigzag, after which he was slower and less vocal.
We eventually reached Gonten so soon, that there was time to cool and
have a bath in the lake; and when that was nearly finished, Christian
brought a plate of cherries and a detachment of the village, and I
ate the cherries and held a levée in the boat--very literally a levée,
as the dressing was by no means accomplished when the deputation
arrived. My late guide, now, as he said, a friend for life, made a
speech to the people, setting forth that he had done that day what he
had never thought to do; for, often as he had been to the entrance of
the Schafloch--five or six times at the least--he had never before
reached the end of the cave. And to whom, he asked, did he owe it? All
previous Herrschaft under his charge had cried _Immer zurück!_ but
this present Herr had known but one cry, _Immer vorwärts!_ Luckily the
steamer now approached, so the speech came to an end, and he shook
hands affectionately, with a vigour that would certainly have
transmitted some of the dye, if that material had not become a part of
the skin which it coloured. Then the village also shook hands, having
evidently understood what Christian said, notwithstanding the fact
that it was intelligible German, and I returned to Thun and Berne.
No. 53 was still the only bed disengaged, for it was very late when I
reached Berne; but on my vehement protestations against that unquiet
chamber, the landlord most obligingly converted a sofa in his own
sitting-room into a temporary bed, and made it over to me. This room was
separated by a door of ground-glass from another sitting-room
brilliantly lighted, in which a number of German young gentlemen were
fêting the return of a comrade after the national manner. The landlord
said he thought it must soon be over, for he doubted whether they could
last much longer; but their powers of endurance were greater than he had
supposed. It will readily be imagined that German songs with a good
chorus, the solo parts being very short, and received with the utmost
impatience by the chorus, were even less soporific in their effect than
the flirtations--though boisterous beyond all conventional propriety--of
German housemaids and waiters.[65]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 55: See p. 258.]
[Footnote 56: Acta SS. Bolland. May 9.--If possessed of the
characteristics of his race--'tall and proud'--his activity belies the
first line of the old saying,
'Lang and lazy,
Little and loud;
Red and foolish,
Black and proud:'
though possibly the personal habits which a modern spirit loves to point
out, as the great essential of hermit-life, united with the family
characteristic of the early Seton to verify the last line of the
saying.]
[Footnote 57: _Bibl. Univ. de Genève_, First Series, xxi. 113. See also
_Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, viii. 290.]
[Footnote 58: _Philosophical Magazine_, Aug. 1829.]
[Footnote 59: Colonel Dufour guessed the elevation of the cave, in 1822,
at two-thirds the height of the Niesen, and forty years after, as
General Dufour, he published the result of the scientific survey of
Switzerland, which makes it 1,780 mètres; so that his early guess was
not a bad one.]
[Footnote 60: There is a hint of something of this kind in an editorial
note in the _Journal des Mines_ (now _Annales des Mines_) of Prairial,
an. iv. pp. 71, 72, in connection with the glacière near Besançon.]
[Footnote 61: M. Soret, who visited the Schafloch in September 1860, and
communicated his notes to M. Thury, speaks of many columns in this part
of the glacière, where we found only two. 'L'un d'entre eux,' he says,
'présentait dans sa partie inférieure une petite grotte ou cavité, assez
grande pour qu'un homme pût y entrer en se courbant.']
[Footnote 62: See also the note at the end of this chapter.]
[Footnote 63: 'Toute la couche supérieure au plan de niveau passant par
le seuil était chargée de brouillard; toute la couche inférieure à ce
niveau était parfaitement limpide.' (_Thury_, p. 37.)]
[Footnote 64: Respectively, 32°·666, 36°·266, and 32°, Fahrenheit.]
[Footnote 65: Since I wrote this chapter, my attention has been called
to a tourist's account of the Schafloch in _Once a Week_ (Nov. 26,
1864), in an article called _An Ice-cavern in the Justis-Thal._ The
writer says--'We proceeded to the farther end of the cavern, or at least
as far as we thought it prudent, to ascertain where the flooring of ice
rounded off into the abyss of unfathomable water we heard trickling
below.' One of the party 'having taken some large stones with him, he
began hurling them into the profound mystery. Presently a heavy
double-bass gurgle issued forth with ominous depth of voice, indicating
the danger of farther progress. Having thus ascertained that if either
of us ventured farther he would most probably not return by the way he
went, the signal of retreat was given, and in about forty minutes, after
encountering the same amusing difficulties which had enlivened our
descent, Æneas-like we gained the upper air.' It will be seen from my
account of what we found in the 'abyss of unfathomable water,' that a
little farther exploration might have effected a change in the writer's
views.]
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