Geneva.
There are five or six different Glaciers, which all terminate upon one
side of the Valley of Chamouni, within the space of about five leagues.
These are prodigious collections of snow and ice, formed in the intervals
or hollows, between the mountains that bound the side of the valley near
which Mount Blanc stands.
The snow in those hollows being screened from the influence of the sun,
the heat of summer can dissolve only a certain portion of it. These
magazines of ice and snow are not formed by what falls directly from the
heavens into the intervals. They are supplied by the snow which falls
during winter on the loftiest parts of Mont Blanc; large beds or strata
of which slide down imperceptibly by their own gravity, and finding no
resistance at these intervals, they form long irregular roots around all
the adjacent mountains.
Five of these enter, by five different embouchures, into the valley of
Chamouni, and are called Glaciers, on one of which we had been.
At present their surface is from a thousand, or two thousand feet high,
above the valley.
Their breadth depends on the wideness of the interval between the
mountains in which they are formed.
Viewed from the valley, they have, in my opinion, a much finer effect
than from their summit.
The rays of the sun striking with various force on the different
parts, according as they are more or less exposed, occasion an unequal
dissolution of the ice; and, with the help of a little imagination, give
the appearances of columns, arches, and turrets, which are in some places
transparent.
A fabric of ice in this taste, two thousand feet high, and three times as
broad, with the sun shining full upon it, you must acknowledge to be a
very singular piece of architecture.
Our company ascended only the Glacier of Montanvert, which is not the
highest, and were contented with a view of the others from the valley;
but more curious travellers will surely think it worth their labour, to
examine each of them more particularly.
Some people are so fond of Glaciers, that not satisfied with their
present size, they insist positively, that they must necessarily grow
larger every year, and they argue the matter thus:
The present existence of the Glaciers is a sufficient proof that there
has, at some period or other, been a greater quantity of snow formed
during the winter, than the heat of the summer has been able to dissolve.
But this disproportion must necessarily increase every year, and, of
consequence, the Glaciers must augment: because, any given quantity of
snow and ice remaining through the course of one summer, must increase
the cold of the atmosphere around it in some degree; which being
reinforced by the snows of the succeeding winter, will refill: the
dissolving power of the sun more the second summer than the first, and
still more the third than the second, and so on.
The conclusion of this reasoning is, that the Glaciers must grow larger
by an increasing ratio every year, till the end of time. For this reason,
the authors of this theory regret, that they themselves have been sent
into the world so soon; because, if their birth had been delayed for nine
or ten thousand years, they should have seen the Glaciers in much greater
glory, Mont Blanc being but a Lilliputian at present, in comparison of
what it will be then.
However rational this may appear, objections have nevertheless been
suggested, which I am sorry for; because, when a theory is tolerably
consistent, well fabricated, and goodly to behold, nothing can be more
vexatious, than to see a plodding officious fellow overthrow the whole
structure at once, by a dash of his pen, as Harlequin does a house with a
touch of his sword, in a pantomime entertainment.
Such cavillers say, that as the Glaciers augment in size, there must
be a greater extent of surface for the sun-beams to act upon, and, of
consequence, the dissolution will be greater, which must effectually
prevent the continual increase contended for.
But the other party extricate themselves from this difficulty by roundly
asserting, that the additional cold occasioned by the snow and ice
already deposited, has a much greater influence in retarding their
dissolution, than the increased surface can have in hastening it: and in
confirmation of their system, they tell you, that the oldest inhabitants
of Chamouni remember the Glaciers when they were much smaller than at
present; and also remember the time when they could walk, from the Valley
of Ice, to places behind the mountains, by passages which are now quite
choked up with hills of snow, not above fifty years old.
Whether the inhabitants of Chamouni assert this from a laudable
partiality to the Glaciers, whom they may now consider (on account of
their drawing strangers to visit the Valley) as their best neighbours;—or
from politeness to the supporters of the above-mentioned opinion;—or from
real observation, I shall not presume to say.—But I myself have heard
several of the old people in Chamouni assert the fact.
The cavillers being thus obliged to relinquish their former objection,
attempt, in the next place, to show, that the above theory leads to an
absurdity; because, say they, If the Glaciers go on increasing in bulk
ad infinitum, the globe itself would become in process of time a mere
appendage to Mont Blanc.
The advocates for the continual augmentation of the Glaciers reply, that
as this inconveniency has not already happened, there needs no other
refutation of the impious doctrine of certain philosophers, who assert
that the world has existed from eternity; and as to the globe’s becoming
an appendage to the mountain, they assure us, that the world will be at
an end long before that event can happen. So that those of the most timid
natures, and most delicate constitutions, may dismiss their fears on that
subject.
For my own part, though I wish well to the Glaciers, and all the
inhabitants of Chamouni, having passed some days very pleasantly in their
company; I will take no part in this controversy, the merits of which I
leave to your own judgment.