Part 9

343. The first observers of striking natural phenomena generally allow wonder and imagination more than their due place. But to exclude all error arising from this cause, I will refer to the journal of a cool and intrepid Arctic navigator, Sir Leopold McClintock. He describes an iceberg 250 feet high, which was aground in 500 feet of water. This would make the entire height of the berg 750 feet, not an unusual altitude for the greater icebergs.

344. From Baffin's Bay these mighty masses come sailing down through Davis' Straits into the broad Atlantic. A vast amount of heat is demanded for the simple liquefaction of ice (§ 48); and the melting of icebergs is on this account so slow, that when large they sometimes maintain themselves till they have been drifted 2000 miles from their place of birth.

345. What is their origin? The Arctic glaciers. From the mountains in the interior the indurated snows slide into the valleys and fill them with ice. The glaciers thus formed move like the Swiss ones, incessantly downward. But the Arctic glaciers reach the sea, enter it, often ploughing up its bottom into submarine moraines. Undermined by the lapping of the waves, and unable to resist the strain imposed by their own weight, they break across, and discharge vast masses into the ocean. Some of these run aground on the adjacent shores, and often maintain themselves for years. Others escape southward, to be finally dissolved in the warm waters of the Atlantic. The first engraving on the opposite page is copied from a photograph taken by Mr. Bradford during a recent expedition to the Northern seas. The second represents a mass of ice upon the Glacier des Bossons. Their likeness suggests their common origin.

§ 50. _The Æggischhorn, the Märgelin See and its Icebergs._

346. I am, however, unwilling that you should quit Switzerland without seeing such icebergs as it can show, and indeed there are other still nobler glaciers than the Mer de Glace with which you ought to be acquainted. In tracing the Rhone to its source, you have already ascended the valley of the Rhone. Let us visit it again together; halt at the little town of Viesch, and go from it straight up to the excellent hostelry on the slope of the Æggischhorn. This we shall make our head-quarters while we explore that monarch of European ice-streams,--the great Aletsch glacier.

347. Including the longest of its branches, this noble ice-river is about twenty miles long, while at the middle of its trunk it measures nearly a mile and a quarter from side to side. The grandest mountains of the Bernese Oberland, the Jungfrau, the Monch, the Trugberg, the Aletschhorn, the Breithorn, the Gletscherhorn, and many another noble peak and ridge, are the collectors of its névés. From three great valleys formed in the heart of the mountains these névés are poured, uniting together to form the trunk of the Aletsch at a place named by a witty mountaineer, the "Place de la Concorde of Nature." If the phrase be meant to convey the ideas of tranquil grandeur, beauty of form, and purity of hue, it is well bestowed.

348. Our hotel is not upon the peak of the Æggischhorn, but a brisk morning walk soon places us upon the top. Thence we see the glacier like a broad river stretching upwards to the roots of the Jungfrau, and downwards past the Bel Alp towards its end. Prolonging the vision downwards, we strike the noblest mountain group in all the Alps,--the Dom and its attendant peaks, the Matterhorn and the Weisshorn. The scene indeed is one of impressive grandeur, a multitude of peaks and crests here unnamed contributing to its glory.

349. But low down to our right, and surrounded by the sheltering mountains, is an object the beauty of which startles those who are unprepared for it. Yonder we see the naked side of the glacier, exposing glistening ice-cliffs sixty or seventy feet high. It would seem as if the Aletsch here were engaged in the vain attempt to thrust an arm through a lateral valley. It once did so; but the arm is now incessantly broken off close to the body of the glacier, a great space formerly covered by the ice being occupied by its water of liquefaction. A lake of the loveliest blue is thus formed, which reaches quite to the base of the ice-cliffs, saps them, as the Arctic waves sap the Greenland glaciers, and receives from them the broken masses which it has undermined. As we look down upon the lake, small icebergs sail over the tranquil surface, each resembling a snowy swan accompanied by its shadow.

350. This is the beautiful little lake of Märgelin, or, as the Swiss here call it, the Märgelin See. You see that splash, and immediately afterwards hear the sound of the plunging ice. The glacier has broken before our eyes, and dropped an iceberg into the lake. All over the lake the water is set in commotion, thus illustrating on a small scale the swamping waves produced by the descent of vast islands of ice from the Arctic glaciers. Look to the end of the lake. It is cumbered with the remnants of icebergs now aground, which have been in part wafted thither by the wind, but in part slowly borne by the water which moves gently in this direction.

351. Imagine us below upon the margin of the lake, as I happened to be on one occasion. There is one large and lonely iceberg about the middle. Suddenly a sound like that of a cataract is heard; we look towards the iceberg and see water teeming from its sides. Whence comes the water? the berg has become top-heavy through the melting underneath; it is in the act of performing a somersault, and in rolling over carries with it a vast quantity of water, which rushes like a waterfall down its sides. And notice that the iceberg, which a moment ago was snowy-white, now exhibits the delicate blue colour characteristic of compact ice. It will soon, however, be rendered white again by the action of the sun. The vaster icebergs of the Northern seas sometimes roll over in the same fashion. A week may be spent with delight and profit at the Æggischhorn.

§ 51. _The Bel Alp._

352. From the Æggischhorn I might lead you along the mountain ridge by the Betten See, the fish of which we have already tasted, to the Rieder Alp, and thence across the Aletsch to the Bel Alp. This is a fine mountain ramble, but you and I prefer making the glacier our highway downwards. Easy at some places, it is by no means child's play at others to unravel its crevasses. But the steady constancy and close observation which we have hitherto found availing in difficult places do not forsake us here. We clear the fissures; and, after four hours of exhilarating work, we find ourselves upon the slope leading up to the Bel Alp hotel.

353. This is one of the finest halting-places in the Alps. Stretching before us up to the Æggischhorn and Märgelin See is the long last reach of the Aletsch, with its great medial moraine running along its back. At hand is the wild gorge of the Massa, in which the snout of the glacier lies couched like the head of a serpent. The beautiful system of the Oberaletsch glaciers is within easy reach. Above us is a peak called the Sparrenhorn, accessible to the most moderate climber, and on the summit of which little more than an hour's exertion will place you and me. Below us now is the Oberaletsch glacier, exhibiting the most perfect of medial moraines. Near us is the great mass of the Aletschhorn, clasped by its névés, and culminating in brown rock. It is supported by other peaks almost as noble as itself. The Nesthorn is at hand; while sweeping round to the west we strike the glorious triad already referred to, the Weisshorn, the Matterhorn, and the Dom. Take one glance at the crevasses of the glacier immediately below us. It tumbles at its end down a steep incline, and is greatly riven. But the crevasses open before the steep part is reached, and you notice the coalescence of marginal and transverse crevasses, producing a system of curved fissures with the convexities of the curves pointing upwards. The mechanical reason of this is now known to you. The glacier-tables are also numerous and fine. I should like to linger with you here for a week, exploring the existing glaciers, and tracing out the evidences of others that have passed away.

§ 52. _The Riffelberg and Görner Glacier._

354. And though our measurements and observations on the Mer de Glace are more or less representative of all that can be made or solved elsewhere, I am unwilling to leave you unacquainted with the great system of glaciers which stream from the northern slopes of Monte Rosa and the adjacent mountains. From the Bel Alp we can descend to Brieg, and thence drive to Visp; but you and I prefer the breezy heights, so we sweep round the promontory of the Nessel, until we stand over the Rhone valley, in front of Visp. From this village an hour's walking carries us to Stalden, where the valley divides into two branches: the one leading through Saas over the Monte Moro, and the other through St. Nicholas to Zermatt. The latter is our route.

355. We reach Zermatt, but do not halt here. On the mountain ridge, 4,000 feet above the valley, we discern the Riffelberg hotel. This we reach. Right in front of us is the pinnacle of the Matterhorn, upon the top of which it must appear incredible to you that a human foot could ever tread. Constancy and skill, however, accomplished this, but in the first instance at a terrible price. In the little churchyard of Zermatt we have seen the graves of two of the greatest mountaineers that Savoy and England have produced: and who, with two gallant young companions, fell from the Matterhorn in 1865.

356. At the Riffelberg we are within an hour's walk of the famous Görner Grat, which commands so grand a view of the glaciers of Monte Rosa. But yonder huge knob of perfectly bare rock, which is called the Riffelhorn, must be our station. What the Cleft Station is to the Mer de Glace, the Riffelhorn is to the Görner glacier and its tributaries. From its lower side the rock, easy as it may seem, is inaccessible. Here, indeed, in 1865, a fifth good man met his end, and he also lies beside his fellow countrymen in the churchyard of Zermatt. Passing a little tarn, or lake, called the Riffel See, we assail the Riffelhorn on its upper side. It is capital rock-practice to reach the summit; and from it we command a most extraordinary scene.

357. The huge and many-peaked mass of Monte Rosa faces us, and we scan its snows from bottom to top. To the right is the mighty ridge of the Lyskamm, also laden with snow; and between both lies the Western Glacier of Monte Rosa. This glacier meets another from the vast snow-fields of the Cima di Jazzi; they join to form the Görner glacier, and from their place of junction stretches the customary medial moraine. On this side of the Lyskamm rise two beautifully snowy eminences, the Twins Castor and Pollux; then come the brown crags of the Breithorn, then the Little Matterhorn, and then the broad snow-field of the Théodule, out of which springs the Great Matterhorn, and which you and I will cross subsequently into Italy.

358. The valleys and depressions between these mountains are filled with glaciers. Down the flanks of the Twin Castor comes the Glacier des Jumeaux, from Pollux comes the Schwartze glacier, from the Breithorn the Trifti glacier, then come the Little Matterhorn glacier and the Théodule glacier, each, as it welds itself to the trunk, carrying with it its medial moraine. We can count nine such moraines from our present position. And to a still more surprising degree than on the Mer de Glace, we notice the power of the ice to yield to pressure; the broad névés being squeezed on the trunk of the Görner into white stripes, which become ever narrower between the bounding moraines, and finally disappear under their own shingle.

359. On the two main tributaries we also notice moraines which seem in each case to rise from the body of the glacier, appearing in the middle of the ice without any apparent origin higher up. These at their sources, are sub-glacial moraines, which have been rubbed away from rocky promontories entirely covered with ice. They lie hidden for a time in the body of the glacier, and appear at the surface where the ice above them has been melted away by the sun.

360. This is the place to mention a notion long entertained by the inhabitants of the high Alps, that glaciers possess the power of thrusting out all impurities from them. On the Mer de Glace you and I have noticed large patches of clay and black mud which evidently came from the body of the glacier, and we can therefore understand how natural was this notion of extrusion to people unaccustomed to close observation. But the power of the glacier in this respect is in reality the power of the sun, which fuses the ice above concealed impurities, and, like the bodies of the guides on the Glacier des Bossons (143), brings them to the light of day.

361. On no other glacier will you find more objects of interest than on the Görner. Sand-cones, glacier-tables, deep ice-gorges cut by streams and bridged fantastically by boulders, moulins, sometimes arched ice-caverns of extraordinary size and beauty. On the lower part of the glacier we notice the partial disappearance of the medial moraine in the crevasses, and its reappearance at the foot of the incline. For many years this glacier was steadily advancing on the meadow in front of it, ploughing up the soil and overturning the chalets in its way. It now shares in the general retreat exhibited during the last fifteen years among the glaciers of the Alps. As usual, a river, the Visp, rushes from a vault at the extremity of the Görner glacier.

§ 53. _Ancient Glaciers of Switzerland._

362. You have not lost the memory of the old Moraine, which interested us so much in our first ascent from the source of the Arveiron; for it opened our minds to the fact that at one period of its history the Mer de Glace attained far greater dimensions than it now exhibits. Our experience since that time has enabled us to pursue these evidences of ice action to an extent of which we had then no notion.

363. Close to the existing glacier, for example, we have repeatedly seen the mountain side laid bare by the retreat of the ice. This is especially conspicuous just now, because for the last fifteen or sixteen years the glaciers of the Alps have been steadily shrinking; so that it is no uncommon thing to see the marginal rocks laid bare for a height of fifty, sixty, eighty, or even one hundred feet above the present glacier. On the rocks thus exposed we see the evident marks of the sliding; and our eyes and minds have been so educated in the observation of these appearances that we are now able to detect, with certainty, icemarks, or moraines, ancient or modern, wherever they appear.

364. But the elevations at which we have found such evidence might well shake belief in the conclusions to which they point. Beside the Massa Gorge, at 1,000 feet above the present Aletsch, we found a great old moraine. Descending the meadows between the Bel Alp and Flatten, we found another, now clothed with grass, and bearing a village on its back. But I wish to carry you to a region which exhibits these evidences on a still grander and more impressive scale. We have already taken a brief flight to the valley of Hasli and the Glacier of the Aar. Let us make that glacier our starting-point. Walking from it downwards towards the Grimsel, we pass everywhere over rocks singularly rounded, and fluted, and scarred. These appearances are manifestly the work of the glacier in recent times. But we approach the Grimsel, and at the turning of the valley stand before the precipitous granite flank of the mountain. The traces of the ancient ice are here as plain as they are amazing. The rocks are so hard that not only the fluting and polishing, but even the fine scratches which date back unnamable thousands of years are as evident as if they had been made yesterday. We may trace these evidences to a height of two thousand feet above the present valley bed. It is indubitable that an ice-river of this astounding depth once flowed through the vale of Hasli.

365. Yonder is the summit of the Siedelhorn; and if we gain it, the Unteraar glacier will lie like a map below us. From this commanding point we plainly see marked upon the mountain sides the height to which the ancient ice extended. The ice-ground part of the mountains is clearly distinguished from the splintered crests which in those distant days rose above the surface of the glacier, and which must have then appeared as island peaks and crests in the midst of an ocean of ice.

366. We now scamper down the Siedelhorn, get once more into the valley of Hasli, along which we follow for more than twenty miles the traces of the ice. Fluted precipices, polished slabs, and beautifully-rounded granite domes. Right and left upon the mountain flanks, at great elevations, the evidences appear. We follow the footsteps of the glacier to the Lake of Brientz; and if we prolonged our enquiries, we should learn that all the lake beds of this region, at the time now referred to, bore the burden of immense masses of ice.

367. Instead of the vale of Hasli, we might take the valley of the Rhone. The traces of a mighty glacier, which formerly filled it, may be followed all the way to Martigny, which is 60 miles distant from the present ice. At Martigny the Rhone glacier was reinforced by another from Mont Blanc, and the welded masses moved onward, planing the mountains right and left, to the Lake of Geneva, the basin of which they entirely filled. Other evidences prove that the glacier did not end here, but pushed across the low country until it encountered the limestone barrier of the Jura Mountains.

§ 54. _Erratic Blocks._

368. What are these other evidences? We have seen mighty rocks poised on the moraines of the Mer de Glace, and we now know that, unless they are split and shattered by the frost, these rocks will, at some distant day, be landed bodily by the Glacier des Bois in the valley of Chamouni. You have already learned that these boulders often reveal the mineralogical nature of the mountains among which the glacier has passed; that specimens are thus brought down of a character totally different from the rocks among which they are finally landed; this is strikingly the case with the _erratic blocks_ stranded along the Jura.

369. For the Jura itself, as already stated, is limestone; there is no trace of native granite to be found amongst these hills. Still along the breast of the mountain above the town of Neufchâtel, and at about 800 feet above the lake of Neufchâtel, we find stranded a belt of granite boulders from Mont Blanc. And when we clear the soil away from the adjacent mountain side, we find upon the limestone rocks the scarrings of the ancient glacier which brought the boulders here.

370. The most famous of these rocks, called the Pierre à Bôt, measures 50 feet in length, 40 in height, and 20 in width. Multiplying these three numbers together, we obtain 40,000 cubic feet as the volume of the boulder.

371. But this is small compared with some of the rocks which constitute the freight of even recent glaciers. Let us visit another of them. We have already been to Stalden, where the valley divides into two branches, the right branch running to St. Nicholas and Zermatt, and the left one to Saas and the Monte Moro. Three hours above Saas we come upon the end of the Allelein glacier, not filling the main valley, but thrown athwart it so as to stop its drainage like a dam. Above this ice-dam we have the Mattmark Lake, and at the head of the lake a small inn well known to travellers over the Monte Moro.

372. Close to this inn is the greatest boulder that we have ever seen. It measures 240,000 cubic feet. Looking across the valley we notice a glacier with its present end half a mile from the boulder. The stone, I believe, is serpentine, and were you and I to explore the Schwartzberg glacier to its upper fastnesses, we should find among them the birthplace of this gigantic stone. Four-and-twenty years ago, when the glacier reached the place now occupied by the boulder, it landed there its mighty freight, and then retreated. There is a second ice-borne rock at hand which would be considered vast were it not dwarfed by the aspect of its huger neighbour.

373. Evidence of this kind might be multiplied to any extent. In fact, at this moment, distinguished men, like Professor Favre of Geneva, are determining from the distribution of the erratic blocks the extent of the ancient glaciers of Switzerland. It was, however, an engineer named Venetz that first brought these evidences to light, and announced to an incredulous world the vast extension of the ancient ice. M. Agassiz afterwards developed and wonderfully expanded the discovery. Perhaps the most interesting observation regarding ancient glaciers is that of Dr. Hooker, who, during a recent visit to Palestine, found the celebrated Cedars of Lebanon growing upon ancient moraines.

§ 55. _Ancient Glaciers of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales._

374. At the time the ice attained this extraordinary development in the Alps, many other portions of Europe, where no glaciers now exist, were covered with them. In the Highlands of Scotland, among the mountains of England, Ireland, and Wales, the ancient glaciers have written their story as plainly as in the Alps themselves. I should like to wander with you through Borrodale in Cumberland, or through the valleys near Bethgellert in Wales. Under all the beauty of the present scenery we should discover the memorials of a time when the whole region was locked in the embrace of ice. Professor Ramsay is especially distinguished by his writings on the ancient glaciers of Wales.

375. We have made the acquaintance of the Reeks of Magillicuddy as the great condensers of Atlantic vapour. At the time now referred to, this moisture did not fall as soft and fructifying rain, but as snow, which formed the nutriment of great glaciers. A chain of lakes now constitutes the chief attraction of Killarney, the Lower, the Middle, and the Upper Lake. Let us suppose ourselves rowing towards the head of the Upper Lake with the Purple Mountain to our left. Remembering our travels in the Alps, you would infallibly call my attention to the planing of the rocks, and declare the action to be unmistakably that of glaciers. With our attention thus sharpened, we land at the head of the lake, and walk up the Black Valley to the base of Magillicuddy's Reeks. Your conclusion would be, that this valley tells a tale as wonderful as that of Hasli.

376. We reach our boat and row homewards along the Upper Lake. Its islands now possess a new interest for us. Some of them are bare, others are covered wholly or in part with luxuriant vegetation; but both the naked and clothed islands are glaciated. The weathering of ages has not altered their forms: there are the Cannon Rock, the Giant's Coffin, the Man of War, all sculptured as if the chisel had passed over them in our own lifetime. These lakes, now fringed with tender woodland beauty, were all occupied by the ancient ice. It has disappeared, and seeds from other regions have been wafted thither to sow the trees, the shrubs, the ferns, and the grasses which now beautify Killarney. Man himself, they say, has made his appearance in the world since that time of ice; but of the real period and manner of man's introduction little is professed to be known since, to make them square with science, new meanings have been found for the beautiful myths and stories of the Bible.