Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland

to express doubts of his ability to find the upper glacière, administering

s advice and his cautions, recommending as the surest safeguard a pocket-pistol, loaded with powder only, to be flashed in the bull's face as he makes his charge. When informed that in England an umbrella or a parasol is found to answer this purpose, he shook his head negatively, evidently having no confidence in his own umbrella, and doubt

ar there, and he had spent hours in searching for it without success. A herdsman on his way from one pasturage to another could give no better help, and we began to despair, till at length Louis desired us to halt in a place sheltered from the rain, while he prosecuted

and earth at one side, the snow was approached by a winding path with a gradual fall. As soon as the snow was reached, the slope became very steep, and led promptly to an arch in the rock, where the stream of ice began. The cave being shallow, the stream soon came to an end, and, unlike that in the lower glacière, it filled the cave down to the terminal wall, and did

d for the cords, and told Louis that we must cut our way down. But, alas! the cords had been left at the other glacière! One long bag, with a hole in the middle like an old-fashioned purse, had carried the luncheon at one end and the ropes at the other; and when the luncheon was finished, the bag had been stowed away under safe trees till our return. This was of course immensely annoying, and I rang the changes on the few words of abuse which invention or knowledge supplied, as we sat damp and shivering on the verge of the slope, idly sending down pieces of broken columns which brought forth tantalising sounds from the subterranean regions. At length Renaud was moved to shame, and declared that he would cut his way down, rope or no rope; but this seemed so horribly hazardous a proceeding under all the circumstances, that I forbad his attempting it. Seeing, however, that he was determined to do something, we arranged ourselves into an apparatus someth

, he cried On peut aller! with a lively satisfaction so completely shared by Mignot, that that worthy person was on the point of letting Renaud's blouse go, in order to indulge in gestures of delight. The step-cutting went on merrily after this announcement, and one by one we

fan, and finally landed us in a subterranean cavern, 72 fee

UPPER GLACIèRE OF T

the fissure, and it had a stream of ice 22 feet long pouring from its base. The colour of the column was unusual, being a dull yellowish green, and the peculiar structure of the ice gave the whole mass the appearance of coursing down very rapidly, as if the water had been frozen while thus moving, and had not therefore ceased so to move. At the bottom of th

y some chance the unwonted disturbance of the air should bring down an unstable block from the roof of the arch, and seal us up for ever. There was no sign of incipient thaw in the cave, and the air was very dry, so much so as at once to call attention to the fact. At the farthest end, a lofty dome opened up in the roof; and possibly at some time or other the rock may here fall through, and afford another means of entrance. Beneath this dome a very lovely cluster of columns h

nstance of clear jelly-like ice, without any lines external or internal

THE UPPER GLACIèRE OF

e white rock through 1-1/2 feet. Mignot, indeed, said 2 feet; but it was his way to make a large estimate of dimensions, and he constantly interrupted my record of measurements by the assertion that I had made them moins que plus. We were all disappointed by the actual size of the ice-fall which

roduced by one or two cracks in the rock, such as every one is well acquainted with who has walked on the fissured limestone summits of the lower mountains; and, indeed, Renaud positively affirmed that at the time of his former visit there was not even this entrance to the lower cave, for the ice-stream reached then a higher point of the wall, and completely filled and hid the arch we had discovered. It is very difficult to see how ice

nd an address, and charged him to write it all down from his account-book, and send it by post. The letter was accordingly written on July 24, and after trying many unsuccessful addresses in

voulait pas vous oublier; nous sommes affligés dans n?tre maison ma femme et gravement malade ce qu

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15 Sep

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francs, delivered at Gland, and five at Geneva. His ordinary staff during the time o

sioners were appointed to fix the boundaries between Berne and Burgundy, on the other side of the range of hill we were now descending, and they decided that one of the boundary stones must be placed at the distance of a common league from the Lake of Les Rousses. Unfortunately, no one could say what a common league was, beyond the vague definition of 'an hour's walk;' so two men were started from the shore of the lake, the one a Burgundian and the other a Swiss, with directions to walk for an hour down the Orbe towards Chenit, the stone to be pl

rain continued unceasingly down to the large plain on which the Federal Camp of Bière[23] is placed. Here for a few moments the sun showed itself, lighting up the white tents, and displaying to great advantage the masses of scented orchises, and the feathery reine-des-prés, which hemmed the road in on either side. All through the earlier part of the day, flowers had forced themselves upon our notice as mere vehicles for collected rain, when we came in contact with them; but now, for a short time, they resumed their pro

of a wall of rock composed of regular parallelopipeds, and in the spring, when the snows are melting freely, its sources burst out at various levels of the rock. Farther to the west, the Versoie, famous for its trout, pours forth a full-sized stream near the Chateau of Divonne, which is said to take its name (Divorum unda) from this phenomenon. Passing to the northern slope of this range of the Jura, the Orbe is a remarkable example of the same sort of thing, flowing out peacefully in very considerable bulk from an arch at the bottom of a perpendicular rock of great height. This river no doubt owes its origin to the superfluous waters of the Lake of Brenets, which have no visible outlet, and sink into fissures and entonnoirs in the rock at the edge of the lake. Notwithstanding that the lake is three-quarters of a league distant, horizontally, and nearly 700 fe