THE GLACIÈRE OF GRAND ANU, ON THE MONTAGNE DE L'EAU, NEAR ANNECY.
M. Thury's list contained a bare mention of two glacières on the M.
Parmelan, near Annecy, without any further information respecting them,
beyond the fact that they supplied ice for Lyons. Their existence had
been apparently reported to him by M. Alphonse Favre, but he had
obtained no account of a visit to the caves. Under these circumstances,
the only plan was to go to Annecy, and trust to chance for finding some
one there who could assist me in my search.
After spending a day or two in the library at Geneva, looking up M.
Thury's references, with respect to various ice-caves, and trying to
discover something more than he had found in the books there, I started
for Annecy at seven in the morning in the banquette of the diligence. On
a fresher day, no doubt the great richness of the orchards and
corn-fields would have been very striking; but on this particular
morning the fields were already trembling with heat, and the trees and
the fruit covered with dust; and there was nothing in the grouping of
the country through which the road lay to refresh the baked and
half-choked traveller. The voyage was to last four and a half hours, and
it soon became a serious question how far it would be possible to face
the heat of noon, when the earlier morning was so utterly unbearable.
Before very long, a counter-irritant appeared in the shape of a
fellow-traveller, whose luggage consisted of a stick and an old pair of
boots. The man was not pleasant to be near in any way, and he was
evidently not at all satisfied with the amount of room I allowed him. He
kept discontentedly and doggedly pushing his spare pair of boots farther
and farther into my two-thirds of the seat, and once or twice was on the
point of a protest, in which case I was prepared to tell him that as he
filled the whole banquette with his smell, he ought in reason to be
satisfied with less room for himself; but instead of speaking, he
brought out a tobacconist's parcel and began to open it. Tobacco-smoke
is all very well under suitable circumstances, but it is possible to be
too hot and dusty and bilious to be able to stand it, and I watched his
proceedings with more of annoyance than of resignation. The parcel
turned out, however, to be delightful snuff, tastefully perfumed and
very refreshing; and the politeness with which the owner gave a pinch to
the foreign monsieur, after apportioning a handful to the driver and
conductor, won him a good three inches more of seat. The inevitable
cigar soon came; but it was a very good one, and no one could complain:
all the same, I could not help feeling a malicious satisfaction when the
_douaniers_ on the French frontier investigated the spare
boots--guiltless, one might have thought, of anything except the
extremity of age and dirt--and drew from them a bundle or two of
smuggled cigars, the owner trying in vain to look as if he rather liked
it.
The Hôtel de Genève is probably the least objectionable of the hotels
of Annecy; but the Poste-bureau is at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, and it
was much too hot for me to fight with the waiters there, and carry off
my knapsack to another house. It is generally a mistake--a great
mistake--to sleep at a house which is the starting-place and the goal
of many diligences. All the night through, whips are cracking, bells
jingling, and men are shouting hoarsely or blowing hoarser horns.
Moreover, the Hôtel d'Angleterre had apparently needed a fresh coat of
paint and universal papering for many years, and the latter need had
at this crisis been so far grappled with that the old paper had been
torn down from the walls and now lay on the various floors, while
large pies of malodorous sizing had been planted at the angles of the
stairs. The natural _salle-à-manger_ was evidently an excellent room,
with oleander balconies, but it was at present in the hands of
joiners, and a card pointed the way to the 'provisionary
_salle-à-manger'_--not a bad name for it--in the neighbourhood of the
kitchen.
There was one redeeming feature. The people of the house were
nice-looking and well-dressed. But experience has taught me to view such
a phenomenon in French towns of humbler rank with somewhat mixed
feelings. When the house is superintended with a keen and watchful eye
by a young lady of fashionable appearance, who takes a personal interest
in a solitary traveller, and suggests an evening's _course_ on the lake,
or a morning's drive to some good view, and makes herself most winning
and agreeable; who takes the words, moreover, out of the mouth of a man
meditating an ordinary dinner, and assures him that she knows exactly
what he wants, and he shall be well satisfied, with a sisterly air that
makes the idea of francs and sous not sordid only, but impossible; I
have slowly learned to expect that this fashion and condescension will
appear in the bill. Prettiness is a very expensive item in such a case;
and as these three were all combined to a somewhat remarkable degree at
the Hôtel d'Angleterre, the eventual bill made me angry, and I should
certainly try the Hôtel de Genève on any future visit to Annecy.
The first thing to be done was to determine the position of the Mont
Parmelan. I was prepared to find the people of the town denying the
existence of such a mountain; but, as it was visible from the door of
the hotel, they could not go quite so far as that. The small crowd at
the door repudiated the glacières with one voice, and pointed out how
unlikely it was that Lyons should be supplied with ice from Annecy;
nevertheless, I continued to ask my way in spite of protestation, till
at length a lame man passed by, who said monsieur was quite right--he
himself knew two glacières on the Mont Parmelan very well. He had never
seen either of them, but he knew them as well as if he had. It was
useless to go to them now, he added, for the owners extracted all the
ice early in the year, and stored it in holes in the lower part of the
mountain. He had no idea by what route they were to be approached from
Annecy, or on which side of the Mont Parmelan they lay.
I now looked on the local map, and determined that the best plan would
be to take the Bonneville diligence as far as Charvonnaz, the point on
the road which seemed to lie nearest to the roots of the Mont Parmelan,
and then be guided by what I might learn among the peasants. Everyone
said there was no chance of getting to anything by that means; but as
the hotel people saw that it was of no use to deny the glacières any
longer, they proposed to take me to a man who knew the M. Parmelan well,
and could tell me all about it. This man proved to be a keeper of
voitures,--an ominous profession under the circumstances,--and he
assured me that I could make a most lovely _course_ the next day,
through scenery of unrivalled beauty; and he eloquently told on his
fingers the villages and sights I should come to. I suggested--without
in the least knowing that it was so--that the drive might be all very
well in itself, but it would not bring me to the glacières; on which he
assured me that he knew every inch of the mountain, and there was not
such a thing as a glacière in the whole district. At this moment, a
gentlemanlike man was brought up by the waiter, and introduced to me as
a monsieur who knew a monsieur who knew the proprietor of one of the
glacières, and would he happy to conduct me to this second monsieur: so,
without any very ceremonious farewell to the owner of the proffered
voiture, we marched off together down the street, and eventually turned
into a _café_, whose master was the monsieur for whom we were in search.
Know the glacière?--yes, indeed! he had ice from it one year every
morning. His wife and he had made a _course_ to the campagne of M. the
Maire of Aviernoz, and he--the cafétier--had descended for miles, as it
were, down and down, till he came to an underground world of ice,
wonderful, totally wonderful: there he perceived so immense a cold, that
he drank a bottle of rhoom--a whole bottle--and drank it from the neck,
_à l'Anglaise_. And when they had gone so far that great dread came upon
them, they rolled a stone down the ice, and it went into the
darkness--boom, boom, boom,--and he put on a power of ventriloquism
which admirably represented the strange suggestive sound. Hold a moment!
had monsieur a crayon? Yes, monsieur had; so the things were impetuously
swept off a round marble table, and the excited little man drew a fancy
portrait of the glacière. The way to reach it? Go by diligence to
Charvonnaz--exactly what I had determined upon--and walk up to Aviernoz,
where his good friend the maire would make me see his beautiful
glacière, through the means of a letter which he went to write. It was
absurd to see this hot little man sign himself 'Dugravel, _glacier_,'
that being the style of his profession, naturally recalling the
contradictory conduct of the Latin noun _lucus_.
The bones of S. Francis of Sales lie in the church of S. François in
Annecy, and I made a pilgrimage in search of them through very
unpleasant streets. After a time, the Italian west front of the church
appeared; but the main door led into a demonstrative bakery, and the
door of the north aisle was obscured by oleanders and a striped awning,
and over it appeared the legend, '_Entrée de l'Hôtel_.' As a man
politely explained, they had built S. Francis another church, and
utilised the old one. The town itself seemed to be of the squalid style
of antiquity--old, no doubt, but very dirty. It is pervaded by streams,
which crop up among the houses, and flow through dark alleys and vaulted
passages, rarely coming into daylight, and suggesting all manner of dark
crimes. The red-legged French kettledrums are, if possible, more
insolent here than in other places, and it is evident that the dogs are
not yet reconciled to the annexation, for the guard swept through the
streets amid a perfect tornado of howls from the negligent scavengers of
the place. For my own part, I was not pleased with the change of rule,
when I found that since Annecy has become French, the _vin d'Asti_ has
become dear, as being now a foreign wine.
The diligence for Bonneville was to leave Annecy at half-past four in
the morning; so I told them to call me at four, intending to breakfast
somewhere on the way. But of course, when four o'clock came, I had to
call myself, and in a quarter of an hour a knock at the door announced
half-past four. I pounced upon the man, and remonstrated with him, but
he assured me it did not matter; and when I reminded him that the
diligence was to leave at half-past four, he observed philosophically
that it was quite true, and I had better make haste, for the poste was
very punctual. At the door of the bureau a loaded diligence stood,
marked _Annecy--Aix_, and I asked had the Bonneville diligence gone? It
did not go till six, the clerk told me; but I reminded him he had said
half-past four when I asked him last night. Half-past four?--true, here
was the carriage standing at the door. But that was for Aix, not
Bonneville, I pointed out to him. Pardon--it was marked Aix, but was in
fact meant for Bonneville.
The diligence reached the end of the by-road leading to Villaz in about
half an hour, and all the fever of Geneva and Annecy seemed to fly away
before the freshness of this green little lane, with clematis in full
flower pervading the hedges, and huge clusters of young nuts peeping
out, and promising later delights to fortunate passers-by. But, alas!
the little lane soon came to an end, and as I faced the fields of corn
up the mountain-side, the hot thunderous air came rolling down in
palpable billows, and oppressive clouds took possession of the
surrounding hills. Three-quarters of an hour brought me to Villaz, a
close collection of houses on the hill-side, with arched stone gateways
leading into the farmyards,--a fortified style of agricultural building
which seems to prevail in that district. After an amount of experience
in out-of-the-way places which makes me very cautious in saying that one
in particular is dirtier than a dozen others, I venture to say that the
_auberge_ of Villaz is the most squalid I have come across; and I would
not feed there again, except in very robust health, even for a new
glacière. Still, it was absolutely necessary to eat something, and the
landlady promised coffee and bread. She showed me first into the
kitchen; but as it was also the place where the domestics slept, with
many quadrupeds, I declined to sit there. Upon this she led me to the
_salon_, where the window resisted all our efforts for some little time,
and then opened upon such a choice assortment of abominations, that I
fled without my baggage. The next attempt she made was the one remaining
room of the house, the family bedroom; but that was so much worse than
all, that I took final refuge on the balcony, a sort of ante-room to the
hen-house. The cocks at the _auberge_ of Villaz are the loudest, the
hens the most talkative, and the cats the most shaggy and presuming, I
have ever met with. Even here, however, all was not unmitigated
darkness; for they ground the coffee while the water was boiling, and
the consequent decoction was admirable. Moreover, the bread had a skin
of such thickness and impervious toughness, that the inside was
presumably clean.
Aviernoz lay about an hour farther. Almost as soon as I left Villaz,
the thunderstorm came on in earnest, with sheets of rain, a regular
_Wolkenbruch_.[66] The rain was most refreshing; but lightning is not
a pleasant companion in presence of a bright ice-axe, and I was glad
when the houses of Aviernoz came in sight. The village had the
appearance of being lost; and the houses were scattered about so
irregularly, that it was difficult to know which was the best point to
make for. The road studiously avoided the scattered houses, and the
_Mairie_ seemed especially difficult to find. When at length it was
found, the maire, like the queen in the poets, was in the kitchen; and
he sat affably on the end of a bench and read the letter of
introduction aloud, asking me, at the conclusion, how was our friend
Dugravel, a man amazing in many ways. When I confessed that I had only
made the acquaintance of the amazing man the night before, and
therefore did not feel competent to give any reliable account of the
state of his health, beyond the fact that he seemed to be in
excellent spirits, the maire looked upon me evidently with great
respect, as having won so far upon a great character like Dugravel in
so short a time, and determined to accompany me himself. Meantime, we
must drink some kirsch. The maire was a young man, spare and vehement.
He talked with a headlong impetuosity which caused him to be always
hot, and his hair limp and errant; and at the end of each sentence
there were so many laggard halves of words to come out together, with
so little breath to bring them out, that he eventuated in a stuttering
scream. His clothes were of such a description, that the most
speculative Israelite would not have gone beyond copper for his
wardrobe, all standing. There were two women in the house, to whom he
was exceedingly imperious: one of them received his orders and his
vehemence with a certain amount of defiance, but the other was subdued
and obedient, and I believe her to have been the mayoress. He poured
himself and his household at my feet, knocked a child one way and his
wife another, and, from the air with which he dragged off the
tablecloth they had laid, and ordered a better, and swept away the
glasses because they were not clean enough--which in itself was
sufficiently true,--and screamed for poached eggs for monsieur, and
then impetuously ate them himself--I fancy that he might have been
taught to play Petrucio with success.
When we had sat for a quarter of an hour or so, a heavy-looking young
man, in fustian clothes and last year's linen, came into the room, and
was introduced as the communal schoolmaster. We shook hands with much
impressment on the strength of the similarity of our professions, and
the maire explained that the new arrival acted also as his secretary,
for there was really so much writing to be done that it was beyond his
own powers; and as the schoolmaster lived _en pension_ at the _Mairie_,
it was very convenient. M. Rosset, the schoolmaster, stated that he had
heard us, as he sat in his room, talking of the proposed visit to the
glacière, and he should much wish to accompany us. We both expressed the
warmest satisfaction; but the maire suggested--how about the boys? That,
M. Rosset said, was simple enough. The world would go to the school at
nine o'clock, and, finding no schoolmaster, would go home again, or
otherwise employ itself; and he could have school on the weekly holiday,
to make up for the lost day. This weekly holiday is universally on
Thursday, he said, because that day divides the week so well; and I
failed to persuade him that there was a commemoration intended in the
choice of that day, as in the observance of Friday and Sunday. The maire
utterly refused to take a cord, on the ground that there was no
possibility of such a thing being of the least use. Fortunately, I had
now my own axe, which in more able hands had mounted more than once Mont
Blanc and Monte Rosa, so I had not the usual fight to procure that
instrument.
Half an hour from the _Mairie_, when we had well commenced the steep
ascent of the mountain-side, the maire turned suddenly round and
exclaimed, 'But the inspector!' Rosset was a sallow man, but he
contrived to turn white, while M. Métral (the maire) explained to me
that the inspector of schools was to visit Aviernoz that day. The
schoolmaster recovered before long, and said he should inform the
inspector that a famous _savant_ had come from England, and required
that the maire and the _instituteur_ should accompany him to the
glacière, to aid him in making scientific observations. In order that he
might have documentary proof to advance, he asked for my card, and made
me write on it my college and university in full.
As I have already said, the maire's style of talking required a good
deal of breath, and so it was not unnatural that the ascent should
reduce him to silence. The schoolmaster talked freely about scholastic
affairs, and gave me an account of the ordinary tariff in village
schools, though each commune may alter the prices of its school if it
please. Under seven years of age, children pay 4 francs a year, or, for
shorter periods than a year, at the rate of 75 centimes a month; between
seven and thirteen, 6 francs a year, or 1 franc a month; from thirteen
to eighteen, 8 francs a year, or 1 f. 50 c. a month. There is the same
difficulty in France, of course, as with us, in keeping children at
school after they are old enough to earn a few centimes by
cattle-keeping; and the Ministry of Education had shortly before
addressed questions to every schoolmaster in the country, asking what
remedy each could suggest. My present friend had replied, that if the
Government would give the education gratis, something might be done; but
he had expressed his opinion that nothing short of an actual subsidy to
parents of children beyond eight or nine years of age would ensure a
general improvement.
Having given me this information, he observed that it was every man's
business to learn, though he and I might be teachers also, and therefore
he was sure monsieur would pardon him if he asked what those black
patches on monsieur's hands might mean,--pointing to certain large areas
of Epsom plaster which covered the tokens of many glacières. When his
mind was set at rest as to this phenomenon, the maire called a halt, and
took his turn of talking. He began to tell me about himself and his
wealth, Rosset backing him up and putting in the most telling parts. He
had very extensive property, and the more level parts of it were
certainly valuable, consisting of 200 _journaux_ of good arable land:
the forests through which we walked were his, and he possessed three
_montagnes_ and châlets higher up on the mountain. The glacière was his
own property; and two years ago he had discovered another in the
neighbourhood, which he had not since visited. He was assisted in his
capacity of maire by twelve councillors--in a larger commune it would
have been fifteen--and the council met four times in the year. If it was
desirable that they should meet on any other occasion, he must write to
the prefect of the arrondissement for permission, specifying the
business which they wished to conduct, and to this specified business
they must confine themselves entirely. Then he wished to know, had we
maires such as he in England? Hereupon I drew a fancy picture of the
Lord Mayor of London, receiving the Queen and the Royal Family in
general in a friendly way, and giving them a dinner,--which, he
observed, must cost a good deal, a great deal. However, he looked round
upon his fields and houses and mountains, and seemed to think that he
could himself stand a considerable drain upon his purse for the
reception of royalty; and possibly he is now anxious that the Emperor
should pass that way, during the five years to which the tenure of the
mayoralty is restricted. Both of my companions were strong in their
French sympathies--the one because under the new rule all communal
affairs were so much better organised, the other because a wonderful
change for the better had taken place in the government superintendence
of schools. Theirs was formerly an odd corner of a kingdom that did not
care much about them, and was not homogeneous; it was now an integral
part of a well-ordered empire. They confessed that the present state of
things cost them much more in taxes, &c., excepting in the upper
mountains, where Rosset had a cousin who paid even less than under
Sardinian rule.
Of course, we talked a little on Church questions; and they were
astonished to hear that I was not only an ecclesiastic, but an ordained
priest,--a sort of thing which they had fancied did not exist in the
English Church. Rosset said the _curés_ of small communes had about £40
a year, but I must have more than that, or I could not afford to travel
so far from home. Had I already said the mass that morning? Had I my
robes in the _sac_ I had left at the _Mairie_? Was the red book they had
seen in my hands (Bädeker's _Schweiz_) a Breviary? They branched off to
matters of doctrine, and discussed them warmly; but some things they so
accommodatingly understated, and others they stated so fairly, that I
was able to tell them they were excellent Anglicans.
Higher up in the forest, we were nearly overwhelmed by a party of
charcoal-porters, who came down with their _traîneaux_ like a black
avalanche. A _traîneau_ is nothing more than a wooden sledge, on two
runners, which are turned up in front, to the height of a yard, to keep
the cargo in its place. In the more level parts the porter is obliged to
drag this, but on the steep zigzags its own weight is sufficient to send
it down; and here the porter places himself in front, with his back
leaning against the sacks of charcoal and the turned-up runners, and the
whole mass descends headlong, the man's legs going at a wild pace, and
now one foot, now the other, steering a judicious course at the turns of
the zigzags. The charcoal is made by Italians, who live on polenta and
cheese high up in the mountains, and bring their manufacture down to a
certain distance, after which the porters take it in charge. The men we
saw told us that by hard work they could make four journeys in the day,
earning a franc by each; out of which, as they said, they must support
stomach and boots, one journey making them ready for a meal, and eight
journeys finishing a pair of soles.
It cost us an hour and a half to reach the maire's first châlet, where
we were to lunch on such food as the old woman who managed it might have
on hand; that is to say, possibly bread, and, beyond that, milk only, in
some shape or other. The forms under which milk can be taught to appear
are manifold. A young Swiss student, who in the madness of his passion
for beetle-hunting had spent fifteen days in a small châlet at
Anzeindaz, sleeping each night on the hay,[67] gave me, some time
since, a list of the various foods on which he lived and grew fat. The
following is the _carte_, as he arranged it:--
Viandes. Vins.
Du séret. Du lait de vache.[68]
Du caillé. Du lait froid.
Du beurre. Du lait de chèvre.
Du fromage gras. Petit lait.
Du fromage mi-gras. De la crême.
Du fromage maigre. Du lait de beurre.[69]
Tome de vache. Petit lait de chèvre.
Tome de chèvre.
_Pour les Cochons_.
Du lait gâté.
Cuite.
Some of the solids and fluids in the earlier part of this _carte_ we
felt tolerably sure of finding at the maire's châlet, and accordingly
any amount of cream and _séret_ proved to be forthcoming. The maire
asserted that _cérac_ was the true name of this recommendable article
of food, _céré_ being the patois for the original word. Others had
told us that the real word was _serré_, meaning _compressed_ curds;
but the French writers who treat learnedly of cheese-making in the
_Annales de Chimie_ adopt the form _sérets_; and in the _Annales
Scientifiques de l'Auvergne_ I find both _seret_ and _serai_, from the
Latin _serum_. There was also bread, which arrived when we were
sitting down to our meal: it had been baked in a huge ring, for
convenience of carriage, and was brought up from the low-lands on a
stick across a boy's shoulder. When the old woman thought it safe to
expose a greater dainty to our attacks, at a later period of the meal,
she brought out a pot of _caillé_, a delightful luxury which prevails
in the form of nuggets of various size floating in sour whey. Owing to
a general want of table apparatus, we placed the pot of caillé on a
broken wall, and speared the nuggets with our pocket-knives.
After the meal, the two Frenchmen found themselves wet and exceedingly
cold; for Frenchmen have not yet learned the blessing of flannel shirts
under a broiling sun. They set to work to dry themselves after an
original fashion. The fire was little more than a collection of
smouldering embers, confined within three stone walls about a foot high;
so they took each a one-legged stool--_chaises des vaches_, or _chaise
des montagnes_--and attached themselves to the stools by the usual
leathern bands round the hips; then they cautiously planted the prods of
the stools in the middle of the embers, maintaining an unstable
equilibrium by resting their own legs on the top of the walls. Here they
sat, smoking and being smoked, till they were dry and warm. Of course,
in case of a slip or an inadvertent movement, they would have gone
sprawling into the fire. A well-known Swiss botanist, who has seen many
strange sleeping-places in the course of sixty years of flower-hunting
in the mountains of Vaud and Valais, has told me that on one occasion he
had reached with great difficulty the only châlet in the neighbourhood
of his day's researches, at a late hour of the night, the whole mountain
being soaked with rain. It was a little upland châlet, which the people
had deserted for the autumn and winter; and meantime a mud avalanche had
taken possession, and covered the floor to a depth of several inches. No
plank was to be found for lying on; but he discovered a broken
one-legged stool, and on this he sat and slept, propped as well as might
be in a corner. It is difficult to say which would be worse--a fall from
the stool by daylight into the embers of a wood fire, or the shuddering
slimy waking about midnight, after a nod more vigorous than the rest, to
find oneself plunged in eight cold inches of soft mud.
About half an hour beyond the châlet, we found the mouth of the
glacière, on a large plateau almost bare of vegetation, and showing the
live rock at the surface. They told me that in a strong winter there
would be an average of 12 feet of snow on the ground here.[70] The
glacière itself is approached by descending one side of a deep pit,
whose circumference is larger than that of any other of the
pit-glacières I have seen. A few yards off there is a smaller shaft in
the rock, which we afterwards found to communicate with the glacière.
The NW. side of the larger pit, being the side at the bottom of which is
the arch of entrance, is vertical, and we spent the time necessary for
growing cool in measuring the height of this face of rock from above.
The plummet ran out 115 feet of string, and struck the slope of snow,
down which the descent to the cave must be made, about 6 feet above the
junction of the snow with the floor of the glacière, which was visible
from the S. side of the edge of the pit; so that the total depth from
the surface of the rock to the ice-floor was 121 feet.
[Illustration: VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIÈRE OF GRAND ANU, NEAR
ANNECY.]
When we were sufficiently cool, we scrambled down the side of the pit
opposite to that in which the archway lies, finding the rock extremely
steep, and then came to a slope of 72 feet of snow, completely exposed
to the weather, which landed us at the mouth of the glacière. The arch
is so large, that we could detect the change of light in the cave,
caused by the passage of clouds across the sun, and candles were not
necessary, excepting in the pits shortly to be described. We saw at once
that rapid thaw was going on somewhere or other; and when we stepped off
the snow, we found ourselves in a couple of inches of soft green
vegetable mud, like a _compote_ of dark-coloured duckweed--or, to use a
more familiar simile, like a mass of overboiled and ill-strained
spinach. To the grief of one of us, there was ice under this, of most
persuasive slipperiness. The maire said that he had never seen these
signs of thaw in his visits in previous years; and as we went farther
and farther into the cave, he was more and more surprised at each step
to find such a large quantity of running water, and so much less ice
than he had expected. The shape of the glacière is a rough circle, 60
feet in diameter; and the floor, which is solid ice, slopes gradually
down to the farther end. The immediate entrance is half-closed by a
steep and very regular cone of snow, lying vertically under the small
shaft we had seen in the rock above. The snow which forms the cone
descends in winter by this shaft; and the formation must have been going
on for a considerable time, since the lower part of the cone has become
solid ice, under the combined influences of pressure and of _dégel_ and
_regel_. I climbed up the side of this, by cutting steps in the lower
part, and digging feet and hands deep into the snow higher up; and I
found the length of the side to be 30 feet. I had no means of
determining the height of the cave, and a guess might not be of much
value.
At first sight, the farther end of the cave was the most striking. The
water which comes from the melting snow down which we had passed in
reaching the glacière, had cut itself deep channels in the floor, and
through these it coursed rapidly till it precipitated itself into a
large pit or _moulin_ in the ice, at the lowest point. This pit, a will
be seen by the section of the cave given on p. 174,[71] terminates the
glacière; and the rock-wall at the farther edge falls away into a sort
of open fissure, down which magnificent cascades of ice stream
emulously, clothing that side of the pit, which would otherwise be solid
rock. We cut a few steps about the upper edge of this _moulin_, to make
all safe, and proceeded to let down a lighted candle, which descended
safely for 36 feet, showing nothing but ice on all sides; it then came
in contact with one of the falls of water, and the light was of course
extinguished. We next tied a stone to the string, and found that after
40 feet it struck on ice and turned inwards, under our feet, stopping
finally at the end of 51 feet; but whether it was really the bottom of
the pit that stopped it, or only some ledge or accidental impediment, we
could not determine. The diameter of this pit might be 3 yards, but we
took no measure of it.
At the extreme right of the cave we found another pit, a yard and a
half across, two-thirds of the circumference of which was formed by
the plateau of ice on which we stood, and the remaining third by a
fluting in the wall of rock. The maire said that, two years ago, this
hole was not visible, being concealed by a large ice-column which had
since fallen in. Here again I let down a lighted candle, with more
hopes of getting it to the bottom, as no part of the cave drained into
the pit. The candle descended steadily, the flame showing no signs of
atmospheric disturbance, and revealing the fact that the opposite side
of the pit, viz. the rock, which alone was visible from our position,
became more and more thickly covered with ice, of exquisite clearness,
and varied and most graceful forms. As foot after foot, and yard after
yard, ran out, and our heads craned farther and farther over the edge
of the pit to follow the descending light, (we lay flat on the ice,
for more safety,) the cries of the schoolmaster became mere howls, and
the maire lapsed into oaths heavy enough to break in the ice. It is
always sufficiently disagreeable to hear men swear; but in situations
which have anything impressive, either of danger or of grandeur, it
becomes more than ever unbearable. I remember on one occasion
over-taking a large party in the descent from the Plateau to the
Grands Mulets, in a place where the snow was extremely soft, and any
moment might land one of us in a crevasse; and I shall never forget
the oaths which caught my ear, from a floundering fellow-countryman
enveloped from the waist downwards.
When 60 feet had run out, the candle stopped, and on stretching over I
saw that it had reached a slope of ice which inclined very steeply
northwards, and passed away under the rock, apparently into a fresh
cavern. By raising the candle slightly and then letting it drop, we made
it glide down this slope for 8 feet; and then it finally rested on a
shelf of ice, showing us the shadowy beginnings of what should be a most
glorious ice-cave. The little light which the candle gave was made the
most of by the reflecting material which surrounded it; and we were able
to see that the archway in the rock was rounded off with grey ice, and
rested, as it were, on icy pillars. As far as we could judge, there
would have been abundant room to pass down the slope under the archway,
if only the preliminary 60 feet could by any means have been
accomplished; and I shall dream for long of what there must be down
there.
As I was anxious to know whether the side of the pit was vertical ice
under our feet, I contrived to get about a third of the way round the
edge, so as almost to reach the fluting in the rock which formed the
farther side of the pit, and then desired the schoolmaster to raise the
candle slowly from the ledge on which it still rested. As he pulled it
gradually up, I was startled to find that the ice fell away sharply
immediately below the spot where we had been collected, and then formed
a solid wall; so that we had been standing on the mere edge of a shelf,
with nothing but black emptiness below. How far the solid wall receded
at the bottom I was unable to determine, for the light of one candle was
of very little use at so great a distance, and in darkness so profound.
I persuaded the maire to make an effort to reach a point from which he
could see the insecurity of the ice which had seemed to form so solid a
floor; and he was so much impressed by what he saw, that he fled with
precipitation from the cave, and we eventually found him asleep under a
bush on the rocks above. In reaching the farther side of the pit, we
crossed unwittingly an ice-bridge formed by a transverse pit or tunnel
in the ice, which opened into the pit we were examining. The maire
afterwards promised to rail off all that end of the glacière, and forbid
his workmen to venture upon it. Considering that the hole itself was
only opened two years before by the fall of a column, and has already
undergone such changes, I shall be surprised if the ice-bridge, and all
that part on which we lay to fathom the pit, does not fall in before
very long; and then, by means of steps and ropes and ladders, it may be
possible to reach the entrance to the lower cave, 190 feet below the
surface of the earth. May I be there to see![72]
The left side of the glacière, near the entrance, was occupied by a
columnar cascade, behind which I forced a passage by chopping away some
lovely ornaments of ice. Here also the solid ground-ice falls away a
little under the surface, leaving a cavern 8 or 9 feet deep, on the rock
side of which every possible glacial fantasy was to be found. The
stalactites here presented the peculiar prismatic structure so often
noticed; but on the more exposed side of the column they were tipped
with limpid ice, free from all apparent external or internal lines. This
reminded me of what we had observed in the Glacière of La Genollière,
namely, that the surface-lines tended to disappear under thaw; so I cut
a piece of prismatic ice and put it in my mouth. In a short time it
became perfectly limpid, and on breaking it up I could discover no signs
of prism. On some parts of the floor of the glacière, the ice was
apparently unprismatic, generally in connection with running water or
other marks of thaw; but, to my surprise, I found that it split into
prisms very readily.
The maire could not understand how it was that, after a winter
especially severe, as that of 1863-4 had been, there should be even less
ice than in the preceding summer, and we could see the marks of last
year's cutting, down to the edge of the _moulin_. He said that they had
never before cut down in that direction; but in the summer of 1863 they
had been so much struck by the clearness of the ice which formed the
floor, that they had cut it freely, and removed a large quantity. This,
I believe, was the cause of the absence of any great amount of fresh
ice. The slope of the whole ice-floor is considerable, and the workmen
increased the slope by cutting away the ice in the neighbourhood of the
edge of the _moulin_: they had also, as we could see quite plainly,
excavated the clearer parts of the ice between the entrance to the cave
and the _moulin_, so that a sort of trough ran down from near the foot
of the snow to the pit at the lower end of the glacière. When we were
there, the water rushed down this trough, and was lost in the pit; and
very probably the same may have been the case in the earlier parts of
the year, when, according to the view I have already expressed, the ice
would under ordinary circumstances have been formed. If this be so, the
caverns below must have received immense additions to their stores of
ice or water. We observed, by the way, that the slope of ice to which
the candle descended in the deeper pit, and the shelf on which it
rested, were quite dry, or at any rate free from all apparent signs of
the abundant water we should have seen, had that been the outlet for the
streams which poured into the _moulin_. The maire said that the columns
and cascades of ice in the cave had been much more beautiful in the
previous summer.
The whole cavern would thus appear to be something of the shape of an
egg, with the longer axis vertical, and the entrance about half-way up
the side. The lower end of this egg-shaped cavity in the rock is filled
with ice, which in some parts shrinks from the rock below the surface,
though, as far as outward appearance goes, it fills the cavern to its
farthest corners. The depth of this ice at one side is 60 feet, and how
much more it may be in the middle it is impossible to say. As we have
seen, there is a second ice-cave opening out of the principal one, at a
depth of 190 feet below the surface; and with respect to this second
cave imagination may run riot. Rosset told me that he had noticed, the
year before, a strong source of water springing out of the side of a
rock, at some little distance from the glacière; but he could not reach
it then, and could not find it now. This may possibly be the drainage of
the glacière in its summer state.
The thermometer stood at 34° in the middle of the cave; and though the
others felt the cold very much, I was myself surprised to find so low a
register, for the atmosphere seemed to be comparatively warm, judging
from what I had experienced in other glacières. The only current of air
we could detect was exceedingly slight, and came from the deeper of the
two pits in the ice. It was so slight, that the flame of the candle
burned apparently quite steadily when we were engaged in determining the
depth and shape of the pit.
The sun had by this time produced such an effect upon the slope of snow
outside the glacière, that we found the ascent sufficiently difficult,
especially as our hands were full of various instruments. The
schoolmaster was not content to choose the straight line up, and in
attempting to perform a zigzag, he came to a part of the slope where the
snow lay about 2 inches thick on solid ice, and the result was an
unscholastic descent in inverted order of precedence. He got on better
over the rolling stones after the snow was accomplished, but the clumsy
style of his climbing dislodged an unpleasant amount and weight of
missiles; and though he was amiable enough to cry '_Garde_!' with every
step he took, it will be found by experiment that it is not much use to
the lower man to have '_Garde_!' shouted in his ears, when his footing
is insecure to begin with, and a large stone comes full at his head, at
the precise moment when two others are taking him in the pit of the
stomach.
We found the maire, as was said, asleep under a bush near the mouth of
the pit; and he pronounced himself completely recovered from the effects
of the cold, and ready to guide us to a second glacière. He told us that
the amount of ice he sold averaged 4,000 _quintaux métriques_ a week,
for the three months of July, August, and September; but the last winter
had been so severe, that the lake had provided ice for the artificial
glacières of Annecy, and no one had as yet applied to him this year. As
only a fortnight of his usual season had passed, he may have since had
plenty of applications, later in the year. The railways have opened up
more convenient sources of ice for Lyons, and for some time he has sent
none to that town.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 66: A Yorkshire farmer unconsciously adapts the German
_Wolkenbruch_, declaring on occasion that the rain is so heavy, it is
'ommust as if a clood had brussen someweers.']
[Footnote 67: I tried the hay in this châlet one night, with such
results that the next time I slept there, two years after, I preferred a
combination of planks.]
[Footnote 68: _i.e._ New milk, warm.]
[Footnote 69: Otherwise graphically called _battu_.]
[Footnote 70: I had no means of determining the elevation of the ground.
The fact of 12 feet of snow is of no value as a guide to the height.
Last winter (1864-5) there was 26 feet of snow on the Jura, at a height
of less than 4,000 feet, and the position of some of the larger châlets
was only marked by a slight boss on the plane surface.]
[Footnote 71: In the section of the cave, I have brought out the deeper
pit from the side into the middle, so as to show both in one section: I
have also slightly shaded the pits, instead of leaving them blank like
shafts in the rock.]
[Footnote 72: I have made arrangements for completing the exploration of
this cave, and the one which is next described, in the course of the
present summer.]
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