OTHER ICE CAVES.
_The Cave of Szelicze, or Szilitze, in Hungary_.[98]
Matthew Bell, the historian of Hungary, sent an account of this cavern
to England, in the middle of the last century, which was printed in the
original Latin in the 'Philosophical Transactions' of 1739-40 (pp. 41,
&c.).
This account states that the cave is in the county of Thorn,[99] among
the lowest spurs of the Carpathians. The entrance, which faces the
north, and is exposed to the cold winds from the snowy part of the
Carpathian range, is 18 fathoms high and 9 broad; and the cave spreads
out laterally, and descends to a point 50 fathoms below the entrance,
where it is 26 fathoms in breadth, and of irregular height. Beyond this
no one had at that time penetrated, on account of the unsafe footing,
although many distant echoes were returned by the farther recesses of
the cave; indeed, to get even so far as this, much step-cutting was
necessary.
When the external frost of winter comes on, the account proceeds, the
effect in the cave is the same as if fires had been lighted there: the
ice melts, and swarms of flies and bats and hares take refuge in the
interior from the severity of the winter. As soon as spring arrives, the
warmth of winter disappears from the interior, water exudes from the
roof and is converted into ice, while the more abundant supplies which
pour down on to the sandy floor are speedily frozen there. In the
Dog-days, the frost is so intense that a small icicle becomes in one day
a huge mass of ice; but a cool day promptly brings a thaw, and the cave
is looked upon as a barometer, not merely feeling, but also presaging,
the changes of weather. The people of the neighbourhood, when employed
in field-work, arrange their labour so that the mid-day meal may be
taken near the cave, when they either ice the water they have brought
with them, or drink the melted ice, which they consider very good for
the stomach. It had been calculated that 600 weekly carts would not be
sufficient to keep the cavern free from ice. The ground above the cave
is peculiarly rich in grass.
In explanation of these phenomena, Bell threw out the following
suggestions, which need no comment. The earth being of itself cold and
damp, the external heat of the atmosphere, by partially penetrating into
the ground, drives in this native cold to the inner parts of the earth,
and makes the cold there more dense. On the other hand, when the
external air is cold, it draws forth towards the surface the heat there
may be in the inner part of the earth, and thus makes caverns warm. In
support and illustration of this view, he states that in the hotter
parts of Hungary, when the people wish to cool their wine, they dig a
hole 2 feet deep, and place in it the flagon of wine, and, after filling
up the hole again, light a blazing fire upon the surface, which cools
the wine as if the flagon had been laid in ice. He also suggests that
possibly the cold winds from the Carpathians bring with them
imperceptible particles of snow, which reach the water of the cave, and
convert it into ice. Further, the rocks of the Carpathians abound in
salts, nitre, alum, &c., which may, perhaps, mingle with such snowy
particles, and produce the ordinary effect of the snow and salt in the
artificial production of ice.
Townson[100] visited this cave half a century later, and concluded that
Bell was in error with regard to the supposed winter thaw and summer
frost, although he himself received information at Kaschau which
corroborated the earlier account. He describes the approach to the
village of Szilitze as leading by a by-road through a pleasant country
of woods and hills, with much pasture-land, the cave lying a mile beyond
the village, and displaying an entrance 100 feet broad, and 20 or 30
feet high, turned towards the north. The descent of the floor of the
cave is rapid, and was covered with thin ice, at the time of his visit,
for the last third of the way: from the roof at the farther end, where
the cave is not so high as at the entrance, a congeries of icicles was
seen to hang; and in a corner on the right, completely sheltered from
the rays of the sun, there was a large mass of the same material. It was
a fine forenoon in July, and all was in a state of thaw, the icicles
dropping water, and the floor of ice covered with a thin layer of water;
while the thermometer in all parts of the cave stood at zero of
Réaumur's scale. The rock is compact unstratified limestone, in which so
many of the famous caverns of the world are found.
_The Cave of Yeermalik, in Koondooz_[101]
In the year 1840, Captain Burslem, of the 13th Light Infantry, made an
expedition from Cabul to the North-west, accompanied by Lieutenant Sturt
of the Bengal Engineers, who was afterwards killed in the terrible pass
where Lady Sale, whose daughter he had married, was shot through the
arm.
After crossing the high and wild pass of Karakotul (10,500 feet), these
travellers reached the romantic glen of the Doaub, which lies at the
foot of the pass, and is surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains.
Here they were hospitably entertained by Shah Pursund Khan, the chief of
the small territory, and their curiosity was roused by the account
given by an old moollah of a cavern seven miles off, which the Shah
strongly advised them not to attempt to visit, for the Sheitan (the
devil), whose ordinary place of abode it was, never allowed a stranger
to return from its recesses. The moollah, however, scouted this idea, on
the ground that it was much too cold for such an inhabitant; and the
Shah eventually agreed to accompany them to the cave with a band of his
followers.
As they rode through long and rich grass, following the course of a
gentle stream, and tormented by swarms of forest flies, or
blood-suckers, the Shah informed them that he had once endeavoured to
explore the cave, and had already penetrated to a considerable
distance, when he came upon the fresh prints of a naked foot, with an
extraordinary impression by their side, which he suspected to be the
foot of Sheitan himself, and so he beat a precipitate retreat. The
moollah told them that there was a large number of skeletons in the
cave, the remains of 700 men who took refuge there during the invasion
of Genghis Khan, with their wives and families, and defended
themselves so stoutly, that, after trying in vain the means by which
the M'Leods were destroyed in barbarous times, and the opponents of
French progress in Algeria in times less remote, the invader built
them in with huge natural blocks of stone, and left them to die of
hunger.
The entrance is half-way up a hill, and is 50 feet high, with about the
same breadth. Not far from the entrance they found a passage between two
jagged rocks, possibly the remains of Genghis Khan's fatal wall, so
narrow that they had some difficulty in squeezing through; and then,
before long, came to a drop of 16 feet, down which they were lowered by
ropes made from the cotton turbans of the Shah and his attendants. Here
they left two men to haul them up on their return, and bade farewell to
the light of day. The narrow path led by the edge of a black abyss,
sometimes over a flooring of smooth ice for a few feet, and widened
gradually till they reached a damp and dripping hall, of dimensions so
vast that the light of their torches did not enable them to form a
conception of its size. In this hall they found hundreds of skeletons in
a perfectly undisturbed state, one, for instance, still holding the
skeletons of two infants in its bony arms, while some of the bodies had
been preserved, and lay shrivelled like those at the Great St. Bernard.
They were very much startled here by the discovery of the prints of a
naked human foot, and by its side the distinct mark of the pointed heel
of an Affghan boot,[102] precisely what had so thoroughly frightened the
Shah twelve years before. The prints retained all the sharpness of
outline which marks a recent impression, and led towards the farther
recesses of the cave; but the Englishmen were called away from their
investigation by the announcement that if they did not make haste, there
would not be oil enough for lighting them to the ice-caves.
Proceeding through several low arches and smaller caves, they reached at
length a vast hall, in the centre of which was[103] an enormous mass of
clear ice, smooth and polished as a mirror, and in the form of a
gigantic beehive, with its dome-shaped top just touching the long
icicles which depended from the jagged surface of the rock. A small
aperture led to the interior of this wonderful congelation, the walls of
which were nearly 2 feet thick; the floor, sides, and roof were smooth
and slippery, and their figures were reflected from floor to ceiling
and from side to side in endless repetition. The inside of this chilly
abode was divided into several compartments of every fantastic shape: in
some the glittering icicles hung like curtains from the roof; in others,
the vault was smooth as glass. Beautifully brilliant were the prismatic
colours reflected from the varied surface of the ice, when the torches
flashed suddenly upon them as they passed from cave to cave. Around,
above, beneath, everything was of solid ice, and being unable to stand
on account of its slippery nature, they slid, or rather glided,
mysteriously along the glassy surface of this hall of spells. In one of
the largest compartments the icicles had reached the floor, and gave the
idea of pillars supporting the roof.
The cavern in which this marvellous mass of ice stood, branched off into
numerous galleries, one of which led the party to a sloping platform of
rapidly increasing steepness, where they were startled by the
reappearance of the naked foot-prints, passing down the slope. The toes
were spread out in a manner which showed that they belonged to some one
who had been in the habit of going barefoot, and Captain Burslem took a
torch and determined to trace the steps: a large stone, however, gave
way under his weight; and this, sliding down at first, and then rolling
and bounding on for ever, raised such a tumult of noise and echoes that
the natives with one accord cried 'Sheitan! Sheitan!' and fled
precipitately, extinguishing all the lights in their fear; so that but
for Sturt's torch the whole party must have been lost in the darkness.
Shah Pursund Khan at once called a retreat, vowing that it was of no use
to attempt to follow the footsteps, as it was well known that the cave
extended to Cabul! The guides had now lost their small allowance of
pluck, and wandered about despairingly for a long time before they could
find their way back to the ice-cave, and thence to the foot of the rock
where the two men and the turban-ladders had been left. As soon as they
came in sight of this, their comrades above cried out to them that they
must make all haste, for Sheitan himself had appeared an hour before,
running along the ledge where they now were, and finally vanishing into
the gloom beyond; an announcement which of course produced a stampede in
the terrified party of natives. Five or six rushed to the spot where the
turbans hung, and only an opportune fall of stones from above prevented
their destroying the apparatus in their blind hurry to escape. The chief
claimed the privilege of being drawn up first, and he and all his
followers declared that nothing should ever tempt them to visit again
the Cave of Yeermalik.[104]
_The Surtshellir, in Iceland_.
The first account of this lava-cavern is given by Olafsen,[105] who
visited it in 1750 and 1753. Ebenezer Henderson[106] explored it in
1815, and Captain Forbes gives some account of it in his recent book on
Iceland.[107] It is mentioned in some of the Sagas,[108] and appears to
have been a refuge for robbers in the tenth century, and Sturla
Sigvatson, with a large band of followers, spent some time here. The
Landnama Saga derives the name Surtshellir from a huge giant called
Surtur, who made his abode in the cave; but Olafsen believed that the
name merely meant _black hole_, from _surtur_ or _svartur_, and was due
to the darkness of the cave and the colour of the lava: in accordance
with this view, it is called _Hellerin Sortur_, or _black hole_, in some
of the earlier writings. The common people are convinced that it is
inhabited by ghosts; and Olafsen and his party were assured that they
would be turned back by horrible noises, or else killed outright by the
spirits of the cave: at any rate, their informants declared they would
no more reach the inner parts of the cavern than they had reached the
traditional green valley of Aradal, isolated in the midst of glaciers,
with its wild population of descendants of the giants, which they had
endeavoured to find some time before.[109]
The cave is in the form of a tunnel a mile or more in length, with
innumerable ramifications, in the lava which has flowed from the Bald
Yökul. It lies on the edge of the uninhabited waste called the
Arnavatns-heidi, in a district described by Captain Forbes as distorted
and devilish, a cast-iron sea of lava. The approach is through an open
chasm, 20 to 40 feet in depth, and 50 feet broad, leading to the
entrance of the cave, where the height is between 30 and 40 feet, and
the breadth rather more than 50. Henderson found a large quantity of
congealed snow at this entrance, and along pool of water resting on a
floor of ice, which turned his party back and forced them to seek
another entrance, where again they found snow piled up to a
considerable height. Olafsen also mentions collections of snow under the
various openings in the lava which forms the roof of the cave. The
latter explorer discovered interesting signs of the early inhabitants of
the Surtshellir, as, for instance, the common bedstead, built of stones,
2-1/2 feet high, 36 feet long, and 14 feet broad, with a pathway down
the middle, forming the only passage to the inner parts of the cave. The
spaces enclosed by these stones were strewn with black sand, on which
rough wool was probably laid by way of mattress. This could scarcely
have been a bedstead in the time of the giants, for a total breadth of
14 feet, deducting for the pathway down the middle, will not give more
than 6 feet for the layer of men on either side, unless indeed they lay
parallel to the passage, and required a length of 36 feet. He also found
an old wall, built with blocks of lava across one part of the cave, as
if for defence, and a large circular heap of the bones of sheep and
oxen, presumably the remains of many years of feasting. Captain Forbes
scoffs at these bones, and suggests errant wild ponies as the depositors
thereof.
Olafsen had found in his earlier visit that the way was stopped, far
in the recesses of the cave, by a lake of water, which filled the
tunnel to a depth of 3 feet or more, lying on ice; but in 1753 there
was not more than a foot of water, through which they waded without
much difficulty. The air soon became exceedingly cold and thick, and
for some hundreds of paces they saw no light of day, till at length
they reached a welcome opening in the roof. Beyond this, the air grew
colder and more thick, and the walls were found to be sheeted with ice
from roof to floor, or covered with broad and connected icicles. The
ground also was a mass of ice, but an inch or two of fine brown earth
lay upon it, which enabled them to keep their footing. This earth
appeared to have been brought down by the water which filtered through
the roof. 'The most wonderful thing,' Olafsen remarks, 'that we
noticed here, was, that the stalactites of ice were set with regular
figures of five and seven sides, joined together, and resembling those
seen on the second stomach of ruminating animals. The condensed cold
of the air must have imparted these figures to the ice; they were not
external (merely?), but in the ice itself, which otherwise was clear
and transparent.'
Henderson and his party appear to have had much more wading to do than
Olafsen, walking in one instance through a long tract of water up to the
knees. In the deeper recesses of the cave, apparently in the part where
the earlier explorers had found the reticulated ice, they found the
whole floor of the passage covered with thick ice, with so steep a dip
that they sat down and slid forward by their own weight--a most
undignified proceeding for a grave gentleman on a mission from the Bible
Society. On holding their torches close to the floor, they saw down to a
depth of 7 or 8 feet, the ice being as clear as crystal. 'The roof and
sides of the cave were decorated with most superb icicles, crystallised
in every possible form, many of which rivalled in minuteness the finest
zeolites; while from the icy floor rose pillars of the same substance,
assuming all the curious and phantastic shapes imaginable, mocking the
proudest specimens of art, and counterfeiting many well-known objects of
animated nature. Many of them were upwards of 4 feet high, generally
sharpened at the extremity, and about 2 feet in thickness. A more
brilliant scene perhaps never presented itself to the human eye, nor was
it easy for us to divest ourselves of the idea that we actually beheld
one of the fairy scenes depicted in Eastern fable. The light of the
torches rendered it peculiarly enchanting.'
Captain Forbes found much ice on the floor, but he did not enjoy the
cold and wet, and seems to have ascended by the last opening in the
roof, mentioned by Olafsen, before reaching the cavern where the more
beautiful parts of the ice-decoration were found by his predecessors.
The two engravings of the interior of the cave given in his book are
copied from the magnificent lithographs of Paul Gaimard,[110] but much
of the effect has been lost in the process of copying.
Mr. Baring Gould mentions this cavern in his book on Iceland, and
believes that its interest has been much overrated. He seems to have
visited the cave, but makes no allusion to the existence of ice.[111]
Mr. E.T. Holland visited the Surtshellir in the course of his tour in
Iceland, in 1861, and an account of his visit is given in the first
volume of 'Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers.'[112] After following in
Olafsen's steps for some time, the party reached a cave whose floor was
composed of very clear ice, apparently of great thickness, for they
could not see the lava beneath it. The walking on this smooth ice-floor
Mr. Holland describes as being delightful, the whole sloping
considerably downwards. 'In five minutes,' he continues, 'we reached the
most beautiful fairy grotto imaginable. From the crystal floor of ice
rose up group after group of transparent icy pillars, while from the
glittering roof most brilliant icy pendants hung down to meet them.
Columns and arches of ice were ranged along the crystalline walls ... I
never saw a more brilliant scene; and indeed it would be difficult to
imagine anything more fairy-like. The pillars were many of them of great
size, tapering to a point as they rose. The largest were at least 8 feet
high, and 6 feet in circumference at their base. The stalactites were on
an equally grand scale. Through this lovely ice-grotto we walked for
nearly ten minutes.'
[Illustration: ICE-CAVE IN THE SURTSHELLIR.]
The temperature of the caves, Mr. Holland states in a note, was from 8°
to 10° C. (46·4° to 50° F.), that of the air outside being 53·6° F.
_The Gypsum Cave of Illetzkaya-Zastchita, in the Steppes of the
Kirghis, South of Orenburg_.
The district in which this cavern occurs is a small green oasis on the
undulating steppe, lying on a vast bed of rock-salt, which extends over
an area of two versts in length, and a mile in breadth, with a thickness
of more than 100 feet. When the thin cover of red sand and marl is
removed, the white salt is exposed, and is found to be so free from all
stain, or admixture of other material, excepting sometimes minute
filaments of gypsum, that it is pounded at once for use, without any
cleansing or recrystallising process.
In the immediate neighbourhood of Illetzkaya-Zastchita there are two or
three gypseous hillocks, and a cavern in one of these is used by the
inhabitants as a cellar, having been artificially enlarged for that
purpose. Sir Roderick Murchison and his colleagues visited this cavern
on a hot day in August, with the thermometer at 90° in the shade, in the
course of their travels under the patronage of the late Emperor of
Russia.[113] They found the hillock to be an irregular cone 150 feet in
height; the entrance was by a frail door, on a level with the village
street, and fully exposed to the rays of the sun; and yet, when the door
was opened, so piercing a current of cold air poured forth, that they
were glad to beat a retreat for a while; and on eventually exploring
farther, they found the quass and provisions, stored in the cave,
half-frozen within three or four paces of the door. The chasm soon
opened out into a natural vault from 12 to 15 feet high, 10 or 12 paces
long, and 7 or 8 in width, which seemed to have numerous small
ramifications into the impending mound of gypsum and marl. The roof of
this inner cavern was hung with undripping solid icicles, and the floor
was a conglomerate of ice and frozen earth. They were assured that the
cold is always greatest within when the external air is hottest and
driest, and that the ice gradually disappears as winter approaches, and
vanishes when the snow comes. The peasants were unanimous in these
statements, and asserted that they could sleep in the cave without
sheepskins in the depth of winter.
Sir Roderick Murchison and his friends were at first inclined to explain
these phenomena by supposing that the chief fissure communicated with
some surface of rock-salt, 'the saliferous vapours of which might be so
rapidly evaporated or changed in escaping to an intensely hot and dry
atmosphere as to produce ice and snow.' But Sir John Herschel, to whom
they applied for assistance, rejected the evaporation theory, and
suggested that the external summer wave of heat might possibly only
reach the cave at Christmas, being delayed six months in its passage
through the rock; the cold of winter, in the same manner, arriving at
midsummer. To this the explorers objected, that the mound contained many
caves, but' only in this particular fissure was any ice found. Dr.
Robinson, astronomer at Armagh, endeavoured to explain the matter by
referring to De Saussure's explanation of the phenomena of _cold
caves_ in Italy and elsewhere; but this, too, was considered
unsatisfactory. At length, Professor Wheatstone referred them to the
memoir by Professor Pictet, in the _Bibliothèque Universelle_ of Geneva,
where that _savant_ improves upon De Saussure's theory, and applies it
in its new form to the case of caves containing permanent ice, in tracts
whose mean cold is above the freezing point. This they seem to have
accepted, adding that the climatological circumstances of Orenburg--a
wet spring, caused by the melting of the abundant snows, followed by a
summer of intense and dry Asiatic heat--must be particularly favourable
for the working out of the theory, and must also act powerfully in
producing the refrigerating effects of evaporation.[114]
The traveller Pallas visited Illetzkaya in July 1769, and describes
this gypseous hillock.[115] In his time the entrance by the side of
the hill was unknown, as also was the existence of ice in the cavern.
He saw at the top of the Kraoul-naï-Gora, or Watch-mountain, as it was
called, a fissure which had once formed a large cavern, into which the
Kirghis were in the habit of throwing furs and other materials as
religious offerings. Although the cave had since fallen in, they still
kept up a part of the ceremony, marching solemnly round the base of
the hill once a year, and bathing in the neighbouring water. In
earlier times, a man had descended through the fissure by means of
cords, and found the cold within insupportable, having very probably
reached the present ice-cave.
Pallas describes many caves in various parts of Russia, but never
seems to hint at the existence of ice in them, though he specially
mentions their extreme cold. Some of these occurred in gypsum, and
some in limestone; and the gypseous caves showed universally a very
low temperature, though still far above the freezing-point.[116] Thus
in the dark cavern of Barnoukova,[117] on the Piana, in a rock of
gypsum, while the thermometer in the shade stood at 75°.2, the
temperatures at various points in the cave were,--at the entrance
59°.36, 25 feet from the entrance 46°.4, and in the coldest part
42°.8. This cold he describes as insupportable. The temperature of the
water which had accumulated in the coldest parts of the cave was
48°.8, considerably higher than the surrounding atmosphere; from which
Pallas concluded that the cold of gypsum-caves is due to the acid
vapours which are generally observed in grottoes of this description.
In May 1770, he found snow on the sloping entrance to the cavern of
Loeklé, in the neighbourhood of the Oufa; but the air of the interior
was not colder than was to be expected in a deep cave.
Sir R. Murchison wrote to Russia for further information with respect to
this cave in January 1865, and again in the beginning of April,
addressing his second enquiry to the Secretary of the Imperial Academy.
In reply, the Secretary says that he is not aware that any thermometric
observations have been made in the cavern. He encloses a short statement
by M. Helmersen, one of the members of the Academy, to the following
effect:--About 50 versts SE. of Miask, in the chain of the Ural, is a
copper mine, called Kirobinskoy, which was abandoned more than fifty
years ago. On the 7th July, 1826, M. Helmersen found a thick wainscoting
of ice on the sides and roof and floor of the horizontal gallery, within
10 feet of the entrance. He was assured that this ice never melts, and
that its thickness is greater in summer than in winter. M. Helmersen
adds, that to the best of his belief no one has investigated the cavern
of Illetzkaya Zastchita since Sir R. Murchison's visit.
_The Ice-Cavern of the Peak of Teneriffe_.[118]
This cave is at a height of 11,040 feet above the sea, and is therefore
not far below the snow-line of the latitudes of the Canary Isles. The
entrance is by a hole 3 or 4 feet square, in the roof of the cave, which
may be about 20 feet from the floor. The peasants who convey snow and
ice from the cave to the lower regions, enter by means of knotted ropes;
but Professor Smyth had caused his ship's carpenter to prepare a stout
ladder, by which photographic instruments and a lady were taken down.
On alighting on a heap of stones at the bottom, the party found
themselves surrounded by a sloping wall of snow, 3 feet high, and 7 or 8
feet broad, the basin in which they stood being formed in the snow by
the vertical rays of the sun, and by the dropping of water from the
edges of the hole[119]. Beyond this ring-fence, large surfaces of water
stretched away into the farther recesses of the cave, resting on a layer
of ice, which appeared to be generally about 2 feet thick. At one of the
deeper ends of the cave, water dropped continually from the crevices of
the roof; a fact which Professor Smyth attributed to the slow advance of
the summer wave of heat through the superincumbent rock, which was only
now reaching the inner recesses of the loose lava, and liquefying the
results of the past winter. There would seem to be immense infiltration
of meteoric water on the Peak; for, notwithstanding the great depth of
rain which falls annually in a liquid or congealed form, the sides of
the mountain are not scored with the lines of water-torrents.
Though occurring in lava, this cavern is quite different from
lava-tunnels, such as the Surtshellir, which are recognised formations,
produced by the cooling of the terminal surface-crust of the stream of
lava, and the subsequent bursting forth of the molten stream within.
This, on the contrary, proved to be a smooth dome-shaped cave, running
off into three contracting lobes or tunnels which might be respectively
70, 50, and 40 feet long, and were all filled to a certain depth with
water: in the smoothness of the interior surfaces, Professor Smyth
believed that he detected the action of highly elastic gases on a
plastic material.
The astronomer takes exception to the term 'underground glacier'[120]
which had been applied to this cavern. He represents that the mountain
is abundantly covered each winter with snow, in the neighbourhood of the
ice-cave, which is nearly within the snow-line, and the stores of snow
thus accumulated in the cave have no great difficulty in resisting the
effects of summer heat, since all radiation is cut off by the roof of
rocks. The importance of this protection may be understood from the fact
that in the middle of July the thermometer at this altitude gave 130° in
the sun, but fell to 47° when relieved from the heat due to radiation.
At the time of this observation, there were still patches of snow lying
on the mountain-side, exposed to the full power of direct radiation;
and, therefore, there is not anything very surprising in the permanence
of snow under such favourable circumstances as are developed in the
cave. Mr. Airy, a few summers ago, found the rooms of the Casa Inglese,
on Mount Etna, half filled with snow, which had drifted in by an open
door, and had been preserved from solar radiation by the thick
roof.[121]
Humboldt remarks, that the mean temperature of the region in which the
Cueva del Hielo (ice-cave) occurs, is not below 3° C. (37.4° F.), but so
much snow and ice are stored up in the winter that the utmost efforts of
the summer heat cannot melt it all. He adds, that the existence of
permanent snow in holes or caves must depend more upon the amount of
winter snow, and the freedom from hot winds, than on the absolute
elevation of the locality.
The natives of Teneriffe are men of faith. They have large belief in the
existence and intercommunication of numerous vast caverns in the Peak,
one of which, on the north coast, is said to communicate with the
ice-cavern, notwithstanding 8 miles of horizontal distance, and 11,000
feet of vertical depth. The truth of this particular article of their
creed has been recently tested by several worthy and reverend hidalgos,
who drove a dog into the entrance of the cavern on the sea-coast, in the
belief that he would eventually come to light again in the ice-cave: he
was accordingly found lying there some days after, greatly fatigued and
emaciated, having in the interval accomplished the 11,000 feet of
subterranean climbing. How he could enter, from below, a water-logged
cave, does not appear to have been explained.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 98: The _Caves of Szelicze_ are mentioned in Murray's
_Handbook of Southern Germany_ (1858, p. 555), where the following
account is given of them:--'During the winter a great quantity of ice
accumulates in these caves, which is not entirely melted before the
commencement of the ensuing winter. In the summer months they are
consequently filled with vast masses of ice broken up into a thousand
fantastic forms, and presenting by their lucidity a singular contrast to
the sombre vaults and massive stalactites of the cavern.'
The _Drachenhöhle_ (Murray, 1. c.p. 553), a series of caverns not far
from Neusohl in Hungary, afford another instance of an ice-cave, one of
the largest of them being said to be coated with a sheet of translucid
ice, through which the stalactitic fretwork of the vault is seen to
great advantage.]
[Footnote 99: Not far from Kaschau.]
[Footnote 100: _Travels in Hungary_, 1797, pp. 317, &c.]
[Footnote 101: _A Peep into Toorkistan_; London, 1846; chapters x. and
xi.]
[Footnote 102: They were now in a country far removed from the Affghans,
and hostile to that people.]
[Footnote 103: The remainder of this paragraph is in Captain Burslem's
own words.]
[Footnote 104: I am indebted for the knowledge of the existence of these
caves to W.A. Sandford, Esq., F.G.S., who informed me that an account of
them was to be found in a book of travels by an English officer. I am
not aware that they have been visited on any other occasion than this.]
[Footnote 105: _Reise durch Island_, Copenhagen, 1744 (being a German
translation from the original Danish), i. 128 sqq.]
[Footnote 106: _Henderson's Iceland_, ii. 189 sqq.]
[Footnote 107: Pp. 145 sqq.]
[Footnote 108: The Sturlunga, Landnama, and Holmveria Sagas.]
[Footnote 109: Two priests determined to solve the mystery of this
unapproachable valley, the Aradal, or Thoris-thal, with its rich meadows
and gigantic inhabitants, and made an expedition for this purpose in
1664. They reached a point where the glaciers fell off into a valley so
deep that they could not see whether there were meadows at the bottom or
not, and the slope was so rapid that it was impossible to descend.]
[Footnote 110: _Voyage en Islande; Atlas Historique_; t. ii., pl.
130-133.]
[Footnote 111: _Iceland: its Scenes and Sagas_: pp. 97, 98.]
[Footnote 112: Page 113.]
[Footnote 113: _Russia and the Ural Mountains_, i. 186, sqq.]
[Footnote 114: See the Papers read before the Geological Society of
London, on March 9, 1842, by Sir John Herschel and Sir E. Murchison, the
substance of which has been given above.
See also the _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_ for 1843 (xxxv. 191), for
an attempt by Dr. Hope to explain the phenomena of this cave by a
reference to the slow penetration of the winter and summer waves of cold
and heat. Dr. Hope believes that, although the external changes do not
travel to any great depth, they reach far enough to communicate with
some of the fissures leading to the cave.]
[Footnote 115: _Voyages_ (French translation); Paris, 1788; i. 364.]
[Footnote 116: In the gypsum to the NE. of Kungur, on the banks of the
Iren, there is a cave containing ice. Four of its chambers have ice, in
one of which a stalagmite of ice rises almost to the roof. The farthest
chamber, 625 fathoms from the entrance, contains a lake of water which
stretches away out of sight under the low roof. (_Taschenbuch für die
gesammte Mineralogie_; Leonhard, 1826; B. 2, S. 425. Published as
_Zeitschrift für Mineralogie_.)]
[Footnote 117: Pallas, _Voyages_, i. 84.]
[Footnote 118: _Teneriffe_, by Professor Smyth, ch. viii., and Humboldt,
_Voyage aux Régions Équinoctiales_; Paris, 1814; i. 124.]
[Footnote 119: They afterwards discovered smoke issuing from the centre
of this patch of stones; so that volcanic heat may possibly have had
something to do with the disappearance of the snow.]
[Footnote 120: '_Ce petit glacier souterrain_,' Humboldt, l.c.]
[Footnote 121: See p. 272 for an account of the underground glacier in
the neighbourhood of the Casa Inglese.]
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