These glaciers have their foundation in the wonderful =Mer de Glace=, or
=Sea of Ice=; shooting up from it their sharp peaks into the frozen air.
“To get the best view of it as a whole,” says a modern Alpine tourist,
“you cross the meadows in the vale of Chamouny, step over the furious
Arve, and climb the mountain precipices to the hight of two thousand
feet, by a rough, craggy path, sometimes winding amidst a wood of firs,
and sometimes wandering over green grasses. At Montanvert you find
yourself on the extremity of a plateau, so situated, that on one side
you may look down into the dread frozen sea, and on the other, by a few
steps, into the lovely green vale of Chamouny! What astonishing variety
and contrast in the spectacle! Far beneath, a smiling and verdant
valley, watered by the Arve, with hamlets, fields and gardens, the abode
of life, sweet children and flowers; far above, savage and inaccessible
crags of ice and granite, and a cataract of stiffened billows,
stretching away beyond sight—the throne of death and winter.
“From the bosom of the tumbling sea of ice, huge granite needles shoot
into the sky, objects of singular sublimity, one of them rising to the
great hight of thirteen thousand feet, seven thousand above the point
where you are standing. This is more than double the hight of Mount
Washington in our country, and this amazing pinnacle of rock looks like
the spire of an interminable colossal cathedral, with other pinnacles
around it. No snow can cling to the summits of these jagged spires; the
lightning does not splinter them; the tempests rave round them; and at
their base, those eternal drifting ranges of snow are formed, that sweep
down into the frozen sea, and feed the perpetual, immeasurable masses of
the glacier. Meanwhile, the laughing verdure, sprinkled with flowers,
plays upon the edges of the enormous masses of ice, so near, that you
may almost touch the ice with one hand, and with the other pluck the
violet. So, oftentimes, the ice and the verdure are mingled in our
earthly pilgrimage; so, sometimes, in one and the same family, you may
see the exquisite refinements and the coarse repugnancies of human
nature. So, in the same house of God, on the same bench, may sit an
angel and a murderer; a villain, like a glacier, and a man with a heart
like a sweet running brook in the sunshine.
“The impetuous arrested cataract seems as if it were plowing the rocky
gorge with its turbulent surges. Indeed, the ridges of rocky fragments
along the edges of the glacier, called _moraines_, do look precisely as
if a colossal iron plow had torn them from the mountain, and laid them
along in one continuous furrow on the frozen verge. It is a scene of
stupendous sublimity. These mighty granite peaks, hewn and pinnacled
into Gothic towers, and these rugged mountain-walls and buttresses—what
a cathedral! with this cloudless sky, by starlight, for its fretted
roof; the chanting wail of the tempest, and the rushing of the avalanche
for its organ. How grand the thundering sound of the vast masses of ice
tumbling from the roof of the Arve-cavern at the foot of the glacier!
Does it not seem, as it sullenly and heavily echoes, and rolls up from
so immense a distance below, even more sublime than the thunder of the
avalanche above us? We could tell better if we could have a genuine
upper avalanche to compare with it. But what a stupendous scene! ‘I
begin now,’ said my companion, ‘to understand the origin of the Gothic
architecture.’ This was a very natural feeling; but, after all, it could
not have been such a scene, that gave birth to the great idea of that
‘frozen poetry’ of the middle ages. Far more likely it was the sounding
aisles of the dim woods, with their checkered green light, and
festooned, pointing arches.
“The colossal furrows of rocks and gravel along the edges of the ice at
the shores of the sea, are produced by the action of the frost and the
avalanches, with the march of the glacier against the sides of the
mountains. Nothing can be more singular than these ridges of mountain
=debris=, apparently plowed up and worked off by the moving of the whole
bed of ice down the valley. Near the shore, the sea is turbid with these
rocks and gravel; but as you go out into the channel, the ice becomes
clearer and more glittering, the crevices and fissures deeper and more
dangerous, and all the phenomena more astonishing. Deep, blue, pellucid
founts of ice-cold water lie in the opening gulfs; and sometimes,
putting your ear to the yawning fissures, you may hear the rippling of
the rills below, that from the bosom of the glacier are hurrying down to
constitute the Arve, bursting furiously forth from the great ice-cavern
in the valley.
“This Mer de Glace is an easy and excellent residence for the scientific
study of the glaciers, a subject of very great interest, formerly filled
with mysteries, which the bold and persevering investigations and
theories of some modern naturalists have quite cleared up. The strange
movements of the glaciers, their apparent willful rejection of
extraneous bodies and substances to the surface and the margin, their
increase and decrease, long remained invested with something of the
supernatural: they seemed to have a soul and a life of their own. They
look motionless and silent, yet they are always moving and sounding on,
and they have great voices that give prophetic warning of the weather to
the shepherds of the Alps. Scientific men have set up huts upon the sea,
and landmarks on the mountains opposite, to test the progress of the icy
masses, and in this way it was found that a cabin constructed by
Professor Hugi on the glacier of the Aar, had traveled, between the
years 1827 and 1840, a distance of forty-six hundred feet. It is
supposed that the Mer de Glace moves down between four and five hundred
feet annually.
“It is impossible to form a grander image of the rigidity and
barrenness, the coldness and death of winter, than when you stand among
the billows of one of these frozen seas; and yet it is here that Nature
locks up in her careful bosom the treasures of the Alpine valleys, the
sources of rich summer verdure and vegetable life. They are hoarded up
in winter, to be poured forth beneath the sun, and with the sun in
summer. Some of the largest rivers in Europe take their rise from the
glaciers, and give to the Swiss valleys their most abundant supply of
water, in the season when ordinary streams are dried up. This is a most
interesting provision in the economy of nature, for if the glaciers did
not exist, those verdant valleys into which the summer sun pours with
such fervor, would be parched with drought. So the mountains are parents
of perpetual streams, and the glaciers are reservoirs of plenty.
“The derivation of the German name for glacier, =gletscher=, is
suggested as coming not from their icy material, but their perpetual
motion, from =glitschen=, to glide; more probably, however, from the
idea of gliding upon their surface. These glaciers come down from the
air, down out of heaven, a perpetual frozen motion, ever changing and
gliding, from the first fall of snow in the atmosphere, through the
state of consolidated grinding blocks of ice, and then into musical
streams that water the valleys. First it is a powdery, feathery snow,
then granulated like hail, and denominated _firn_, forming vast beds and
sheets around the highest mountain summits, then frozen into masses, by
which time it has traveled down to within seven thousand feet above the
level of the sea, where commences the great ice-ocean that fills the
uninhabitable Alpine valleys, unceasingly freezing, melting and moving
down. It has been estimated by Saussure and others, that these seas of
ice, at their greatest thickness, are six or eight hundred feet deep.
They are traversed by deep fissures, and as they approach the great
precipices, over which they plunge like a cataract into the vales, they
are split in all directions, and heaved up into waves, reefs, peaks,
pinnacles and minarets. Underneath they are traversed by as many
galleries and caverns, through which run the rills and torrents
constantly gathering from the melting masses above. These innumerable
streams, gathering in one as they approach the termination of the
glacier, rush out from beneath it, under a great vault of ice, and thus
are born into the breathing world, full-grown roaring rivers, from
night, frost and chaos.
“A peasant has been known to have fallen into an ice-gulf in one of
these seas, near one of the flowing sub-glacial torrents, and following
the course of the stream to the foot of the glacier, he came out alive!
The German naturalist, Hugi, set out to explore the recesses of one of
the glaciers through the bed of a former torrent, and wandered on in its
ice-caverns the distance of a mile. ‘The ice was everywhere eaten away
into dome-shaped hollows, varying from two to twelve feet in hight, so
that the whole mass of the glacier rested at intervals on pillars, or
feet of ice, irregular in size and shape, which had been left standing.
As soon as any of these props gave way, a portion of the glacier would
of course fall in and move on. A dim twilight, scantily transmitted
through the mass of ice above, prevailed in these caverns of ice, not
sufficient to allow one to read, except close to the fissures, which
directly admitted the daylight. The intense blue of the mass of the ice
contrasted remarkably with the pure white of the icy stalactites, or
pendents descending from the roof. The water streamed down upon him from
all sides, so that, after wandering about for two hours, at times
bending and creeping, to get along under the low vault, he returned to
the open air, quite drenched and half-frozen.’
“This sea of ice, which embosoms in its farthest recesses a little
living flower-garden, whither the humble-bees from Chamouny resort for
honey, is also bordered by steep lonely beds of the fragrant
rhododendron, or rose of the Alps. This hardy and beautiful flower grows
from a bush larger than our sweet-fern, with foliage like the leaves of
the ivory-plum. It continues blooming late in the season, and sometimes
covers vast declivities on the mountains at a great hight, where one
would hardly suppose it possible for a handful of earth to cling to the
rocky surface. There, amid the snows and ice of a thousand winters, it
pours forth its perfume on the air, though there be none to inhale the
fragrance, or praise the sweetness, save only ‘the little busy bees,’
that seem dizzy with delight, as they throw themselves into the bosom of
these beds of roses.
“Higher still on the opposite side of this great ice-sea, there are
mountain-slopes of grass at the base of stupendous rocky pinnacles,
whither the shepherds of the Alps drive their herds from Chamouny, for
three months’ pasturage. They have no way of getting them there but
across the dangerous glacier; and it is said that the passage is a sort
of annual celebration, when men, women and children go up to Montanvert,
to witness and assist the difficult transportation. When the herds have
crossed, one peasant stays with them for the whole three months of their
summer excursion, living upon bread and cheese, with one cow among the
herd to supply him with milk. When he is not sleeping, he knits
stockings, and ruminates as contentedly as the browsing cattle, his only
care being to increase his store.”