Ages are your days,Ye grand expressors of the present tenseAnd types of permanence;Firm ensigns of the fatal BeingAmid these coward shapes of joy and griefThat will not bide the seeing.Hither we bringOur insect miseries to the rocks,And the whole flight with pestering wingVanish and end their murmuring,Vanish beside these dedicated blocks.
Ages are your days,Ye grand expressors of the present tenseAnd types of permanence;Firm ensigns of the fatal BeingAmid these coward shapes of joy and griefThat will not bide the seeing.Hither we bringOur insect miseries to the rocks,And the whole flight with pestering wingVanish and end their murmuring,Vanish beside these dedicated blocks.
Emerson
GLACIERS OF THE ALPS.
In the autumn of 1854 I attended the meeting of the British Association at Liverpool; and, after it was over, availed myself of my position to make an excursion into North Wales. Guided by a friend who knew the country, I became acquainted with its chief beauties, and concluded the expedition by a visit to Bangor and the neighbouring slate quarries of Penrhyn.
From my boyhood I had been accustomed to handle slates; had seen them used as roofing materials, and had worked the usual amount of arithmetic upon them at school; but now, as I saw the rocks blasted, the broken masses removed to the sheds surrounding the quarry, and there cloven into thin plates, a new interest was excited, and I could not help asking after the cause of this extraordinary property of cleavage. It sufficed to strike the point of an iron instrument into the edge of a plate of rock to cause the mass to yield and open, as wood opens in advance of a wedge driven into it. I walked round the quarry and observed that the planes of cleavage were everywhere parallel; the rock was capable of being split in one direction only, and this direction remained perfectly constant throughout the entire quarry.
CLEAVAGE OF SLATE ROCKS.
I was puzzled, and, on expressing my perplexity to my companion, he suggested that the cleavage was nothingmore than the layers in which the rock had been originally deposited, and which, by some subsequent disturbance, had been set on end, like the strata of the sandstone rocks and chalk cliffs of Alum Bay. But though I was too ignorant to combat this notion successfully, it by no means satisfied me. I did not know that at the time of my visit this very question of slaty cleavage was exciting the greatest attention among English geologists, and I quitted the place with that feeling of intellectual discontent which, however unpleasant it may be for a time, is very useful as a stimulant, and perhaps as necessary to the true appreciation of knowledge as a healthy appetite is to the enjoyment of food.
On inquiry I found that the subject had been treated by three English writers, Professor Sedgwick, Mr. Daniel Sharpe, and Mr. Sorby. From Professor Sedgwick I learned that cleavage and stratification were things totally distinct from each other; that in many cases the strata could be observed with the cleavage passing through them at a high angle; and that this was the case throughout vast areas in North Wales and Cumberland. I read the lucid and important memoir of this eminent geologist with great interest: it placed the data of the problem before me, as far as they were then known, and I found myself, to some extent at least, in a condition to appreciate the value of a theoretic explanation.
Everybody has heard of the force of gravitation, and of that of cohesion; but there is a more subtle play of forces exerted by the molecules of bodies upon each other when these molecules possess sufficient freedom of action. In virtue of such forces, the ultimate particles of matter are enabled to build themselves up into those wondrous edifices which we call crystals. A diamond is a crystal self-erected from atoms of carbon; an amethyst is a crystal built up from particles of silica; Iceland spar is a crystal builtby particles of carbonate of lime. By artificial means we can allow the particles of bodies the free play necessary to their crystallization. Thus a solution of saltpetre exposed to slow evaporation produces crystals of saltpetre; alum crystals of great size and beauty may be obtained in a similar manner; and in the formation of a bit of common sugar-candy there are agencies at play, the contemplation of which, as mere objects of thought, is sufficient to make the wisest philosopher bow down in wonder, and confess himself a child.
CRYSTALLIZATION THEORY.
The particles of certain crystalline bodies are found to arrange themselves in layers, like courses of atomic masonry, and along these layers such crystals may be easily cloven into the thinnest laminæ. Some crystals possessonesuch direction in which they may be cloven, some several; some, on the other hand, may be split with different facility in different directions. Rock salt may be cloven with equal facility in three directions at right angles to each other; that is, it may be split into cubes; calcspar may be cloven in three directions oblique to each other; that is, into rhomboids. Heavy spar may also be cloven in three directions, but one cleavage is much more perfect, or moreeminentas it is sometimes called, than the rest. Mica is a crystal which cleaves very readily in one direction, and it is sufficiently tough to furnish films of extreme tenuity: finally, any boy, with sufficient skill, who tries a good crystal of sugar-candy in various directions with the blade of his penknife, will find that it possesses one direction in particular, along which, if the blade of the knife be placed and struck, the crystal will split into plates possessing clean and shining surfaces of cleavage.
POLAR FORCES.
Professor Sedgwick was intimately acquainted with all these facts, and a great many more, when he investigated the cleavage of slate rocks; and seeing no other explanation open to him, he ascribed to slaty cleavage a crystallineorigin. He supposed that the particles of slate rock were acted on, after their deposition, by "polar forces," which so arranged them as to produce the cleavage. According to this theory, therefore, Honister Crag and the cliffs of Penrhyn are to be regarded as portions of enormous crystals; a length of time commensurate with the vastness of the supposed action being assumed to have elapsed between the deposition of the rock and its final crystallization.
When, however, we look closely into this bold and beautiful hypothesis, we find that the only analogy which exists between the physical structure of slate rocks and of crystals is this single one of cleavage. Such a coincidence might fairly give rise to the conjecture that both were due to a common cause; but there is great difficulty in accepting this as a theoretic truth. When we examine the structure of a slate rock, we find that the substance is composed of the débris of former rocks; that it was once a fine mud, composed of particles ofsensible magnitude. Is it meant that these particles, each taken as a whole, were re-arranged after deposition? If so, the force which effected such an arrangement must be wholly different from that of crystallization, for the latter is essentiallymolecular. What is this force? Nature, as far as we know, furnishes none competent, under the conditions, to produce the effect. Is it meant that the molecules composing these sensible particles have re-arranged themselves? We find no evidence of such an action in the individual fragments: the mica is still mica, and possesses all the properties of mica; and so of the other ingredients of which the rock is composed. Independent of this, that an aggregate of heterogeneous mineral fragments should, without any assignable external cause, so shift its molecules as to produce a plane of cleavage common to them all, is, in my opinion, an assumption too heavy for any theory to bear.
Nevertheless, the paper of Professor Sedgwick invested the subject of slaty cleavage with an interest not to be forgotten, and proved the stimulus to further inquiry. The structure of slate rocks was more closely examined; the fossils which they contained were subjected to rigid scrutiny, and their shapes compared with those of the same species taken from other rocks. Thus proceeding, the late Mr. Daniel Sharpe found that the fossils contained in slate rocks are distorted in shape, being uniformly flattened out in the direction of the planes of cleavage. Here, then, was a fact of capital importance,—the shells became the indicators of an action to which the mass containing them had been subjected; they demonstrated the operation of pressure acting at right angles to the planes of cleavage.
MECHANICAL THEORY.
The more the subject was investigated, the more clearly were the evidences of pressure made out. Subsequent to Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Sorby entered upon this field of inquiry. With great skill and patience he prepared sections of slate rock, which he submitted to microscopic examination, and his observations showed that the evidences of pressure could be plainly traced, even in his minute specimens. The subject has been since ably followed up by Professors Haughton, Harkness, and others; but to the two gentlemen first mentioned we are, I think, indebted for the prime facts on which rests themechanical theoryof slaty cleavage.[A]
LECTURE AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.
The observations just referred to showed the co-existence of the two phenomena, but they did not prove that pressure and cleavage stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect. "Can the pressure produce the cleavage?" was still an open question, and it was one which mere reasoning, unaided by experiment, was incompetent to answer.Sharpe despaired of an experimental solution, regarding our means as inadequate, and our time on earth too short to produce the result. Mr. Sorby was more hopeful. Submitting mixtures of gypsum and oxide of iron scales to pressure, he found that the scales set themselves approximately at right angles to the direction in which the pressure was applied. The position of the scales resembled that of the plates of mica which his researches had disclosed to him in slate rock, and he inferred that the presence of such plates, and of flat or elongated fragments generally, lying all in the same general direction, was the cause of slaty cleavage. At the meeting of the British Association at Glasgow, in 1855, I had the pleasure of seeing some of Mr. Sorby's specimens, and, though the cleavage they exhibited was very rough, still, the tendency to yield at right angles to the direction in which the pressure had been applied, appeared sufficiently manifest.
At the time now referred to I was engaged, and had been for a long time previously, in examining the effects of pressure upon the magnetic force, and, as far back as 1851, I had noticed that some of the bodies which I had subjected to pressure exhibited a cleavage of surpassing beauty and delicacy. The bearing of such facts upon the present question now forcibly occurred to me. I followed up the observations; visited slate yards and quarries, observed the exfoliation of rails, the fibres of iron, the structure of tiles, pottery, and cheese, and had several practical lessons in the manufacture of puff-paste and other laminated confectionery. My observations, I thought, pointed to a theory of slaty cleavage different from any previously given, and which, moreover, referred a great number of apparently unrelated phenomena to a common cause. On the 10th of June, 1856, I made them the subject of a Friday evening's discourse at the Royal Institution.[B]
ORIGIN OF RESEARCHES.
Such are the circumstances, apparently remote enough, under which my connexion with glaciers originated. My friend Professor Huxley was present at the lecture referred to: he was well acquainted with the work of Professor Forbes, entitled 'Travels in the Alps,' and he surmised that the question of slaty cleavage, in its new aspect, might have some bearing upon the laminated structure of glacier-ice discussed in the work referred to. He therefore urged me to read the 'Travels,' which I did with care, and the book made the same impression upon me that it had produced upon my friend. We were both going to Switzerland that year, and it required but a slight modification of our plans to arrange a joint excursion over some of the glaciers of the Oberland, and thus afford ourselves the means of observing together the veined structure of the ice.
Had the results of this arrangement been revealed to me beforehand, I should have paused before entering upon an investigation which required of me so long a renunciation of my old and more favourite pursuits. But no man knows when he commences the examination of a physical problem into what new and complicated mental alliances it may lead him. No fragment of nature can be studied alone; each part is related to every other part; and hence it is, that, following up the links of law which connect phenomena, the physical investigator often finds himself led far beyond the scope of his original intentions, the danger in this respect augmenting in direct proportion to the wish of the inquirer to render his knowledge solid and complete.
A BOY'S BOOK.
When the idea of writing this book first occurred to me, it was not my intention to confine myself to the glaciers alone, but to make the work a vehicle for the familiar explanation of such general physical phenomena as had come under my notice. Nor did I intend to address it to a cultured man of science, but to a youth of average intelligence,and furnished with the education which England now offers to the young. I wished indeed to make it a boy's class-book, which should reveal the mode of life, as well as the scientific objects, of an explorer of the Alps. The incidents of the past year have caused me to deviate, in some degree, from this intention, but its traces will be sufficiently manifest; and this reference to it will, I trust, excuse an occasional liberty of style and simplicity of treatment which would be out of place if intended for a reader of riper years.
FOOTNOTES:[A]Mr. Sorby has drawn my attention to an able and interesting paper by M. Bauer, in Karsten's 'Archiv' for 1846; in which it is announced that cleavage is a tension of the massproduced by pressure. The author refers to the experiments of Mr. Hopkins as bearing upon the question.[B]SeeAppendix.
[A]Mr. Sorby has drawn my attention to an able and interesting paper by M. Bauer, in Karsten's 'Archiv' for 1846; in which it is announced that cleavage is a tension of the massproduced by pressure. The author refers to the experiments of Mr. Hopkins as bearing upon the question.
[A]Mr. Sorby has drawn my attention to an able and interesting paper by M. Bauer, in Karsten's 'Archiv' for 1846; in which it is announced that cleavage is a tension of the massproduced by pressure. The author refers to the experiments of Mr. Hopkins as bearing upon the question.
[B]SeeAppendix.
[B]SeeAppendix.
THE OBERLAND. 1856.
On the 16th of August, 1856, I received my Alpenstock from the hands of Dr. Hooker, in the garden of the Pension Ober, at Interlaken. It bore my name, not marked, however, by the vulgar brands of the country, but by the solar beams which had been converged upon it by the pocket lens of my friend. I was the companion of Mr. Huxley, and our first aim was to cross the Wengern Alp. Light and shadow enriched the crags and green slopes as we advanced up the valley of Lauterbrunnen, and each occupied himself with that which most interested him. My companion examined the drift, I the cleavage, while both of us looked with interest at the contortions of the strata to our left, and at the shadowy, unsubstantial aspect of the pines, gleaming through the sunhaze to our right.
FOLDED ROCKS. 1856.
What was the physical condition of the rock when it was thus bent and folded like a pliant mass? Was it necessarily softer than it is at present? I do not think so. The shock which would crush a railway carriage, if communicated to it at once, is harmless when distributed over the interval necessary for the pushing in of the buffer. By suddenly stopping a cock from which water flows you may burst the conveyance pipe, while a slow turning of the cock keeps all safe. Might not a solid rock by ages of pressure be folded as above? It is a physical axiom that no body is perfectly hard, none perfectly soft, none perfectly elastic. The hardest body subjected to pressure yields, however little, and the same body when the pressure is removedcannot return to its original form. If it did not yield in the slightest degree it would be perfectly hard; if it could completely return to its original shape it would be perfectly elastic.
Let a pound weight be placed upon a cube of granite; the cube is flattened, though in an infinitesimal degree. Let the weight be removed, the cuberemainsa little flattened; it cannot quite return to its primitive condition. Let us call the cube thus flattened No. 1. Starting with No. 1 as a new mass, let the pound weight be laid upon it; the mass yields, and on removing the weight it cannot return to the dimensions of No. 1; we have a more flattened mass, No. 2. Proceeding in this manner, it is manifest that by a repetition of the process we should produce a series of masses, each succeeding one more flattened than the former. This appears to be a necessary consequence of the physical axiom referred to above.
Now if, instead of removing and replacing the weight in the manner supposed, we cause it to rest continuously upon the cube, the flattening, which above was intermittent, will be continuous; no matter how hard the cube may be, there will be a gradual yielding of its mass under the pressure. Apply this to squeezed rocks—to those, for example, which form the base of an obelisk like the Matterhorn; that this base must yield, seems a certain consequence of the physical constitution of matter: the conclusion seems inevitable that the mountain is sinking by its own weight. Let two points be fixed, one near the summit, the other near the base of the obelisk; next year these points will have approached each other. Whether the amount of approach in a human lifetime be measureable we know not; but it seems certain that ages would leave their impress upon the mass, and render visible to the eye an action which at present is appreciable by the imagination only.
THE JUNGFRAU AND SILBERHORN. 1856.
We halted on the night of the 16th at the Jungfrau Hotel, and next morning we saw the beams of the rising sun fall upon the peaked snow of the Silberhorn. Slowly and solemnly the pure white cone appeared to rise higher and higher into the sunlight, being afterwards mottled with gold and gloom, as clouds drifted between it and the sun. I descended alone towards the base of the mountain, making my way through a rugged gorge, the sides of which were strewn with pine-trees, splintered, broken across, and torn up by the roots. I finally reached the end of a glacier, formed by the snow and shattered ice which fall from the shoulders of the Jungfrau. The view from this place had a savage magnificence such as I had not previously beheld, and it was not without some slight feeling of awe that I clambered up the end of the glacier. It was the first I had actually stood upon. The loneliness of the place was very impressive, the silence being only broken by fitful gusts of wind, or by the weird rattle of the débris which fell at intervals from the melting ice.
AVALANCHES. 1856.
Once I noticed what appeared to be the sudden and enormous augmentation of the waters of a cascade, but the sound soon informed me that the increase was due to an avalanche which had chosen the track of the cascade for its rush. Soon afterwards my eyes were fixed upon a white slope some thousands of feet above me; I saw the ice give way, and, after a sensible interval, the thunder of another avalanche reached me. A kind of zigzag channel had been worn on the side of the mountain, and through this the avalanche rushed, hidden at intervals, and anon shooting forth, and leaping like a cataract down the precipices. The sound was sometimes continuous, but sometimes broken into rounded explosions which seemed to assert a passionate predominance over the general level of the roar. These avalanches, when they first give way, usually consist of enormous blocks of ice, which are moreand more shattered as they descend. Partly to the echoes of the first crash, but mainly, I think, to the shock of the harder masses which preserve their cohesion, the explosions which occur during the descent of the avalanche are to be ascribed. Much of the ice is crushed to powder; and thus, when an avalanche pours cataract-like over a ledge, the heavier masses, being less influenced by the atmospheric resistance, shoot forward like descending rockets, leaving the lighter powder in trains behind them. Such is the material of which a class of the smaller glaciers in the Alps is composed. They are the products of avalanches, the crushed ice being recompacted into a solid mass, which exhibits on a smaller scale most of the characteristics of the large glaciers.
After three hours' absence I reascended to the hotel, breakfasted, and afterwards returned with Mr. Huxley to the glacier. While we were engaged upon it the weather suddenly changed; lightning flashed about the summits of the Jungfrau, and thunder "leaped" among her crags. Heavy rain fell, but it cleared up afterwards with magical speed, and we returned to our hotel. Heedless of the forebodings of many prophets of evil weather we set out for Grindelwald. The scene from the summit of the Little Scheideck was exceedingly grand. The upper air exhibited a commotion which we did not experience; clouds were wildly driven against the flanks of the Eiger, the Jungfrau thundered behind, while in front of us a magnificent rainbow, fixing one of its arms in the valley of Grindelwald, and, throwing the other right over the crown of the Wetterhorn, clasped the mountain in its embrace. Through jagged apertures in the clouds floods of golden light were poured down the sides of the mountain. On the slopes were innumerable chalets, glistening in the sunbeams, herds browsing peacefully and shaking their mellow bells; while the blackness of the pine-trees, crowdedinto woods, or scattered in pleasant clusters over alp and valley, contrasted forcibly with the lively green of the fields.
THE HEISSE PLATTE. 1856.
At Grindelwald, on the 18th, we engaged a strong and competent guide, named Christian Kaufmann, and proceeded to the Lower Glacier. After a steep ascent, we gained a point from which we could look down upon the frozen mass. At first the ice presented an appearance of utter confusion, but we soon reached a position where the mechanical conditions of the glacier revealed themselves, and where we might learn, had we not known it before, that confusion is merely the unknown intermixture of laws, and becomes order and beauty when we rise to their comprehension. We reached the so-called Eismeer—Ice Sea. In front of us was the range of the Viescherhörner, and a vast snow slope, from which one branch of the glacier was fed. Near the base of thisnévé, and surrounded on all sides by ice, lay a brown rock, to which our attention was directed as a place noted for avalanches; on this rock snow or ice never rests, and it is hence called theHeisse Platte—the Hot Plate. At the base of the rock, and far below it, the glacier was covered with clean crushed ice, which had fallen from a crown of frozen cliffs encircling the brow of the rock. One obelisk in particular signalised itself from all others by its exceeding grace and beauty. Its general surface was dazzling white, but from its clefts and fissures issued a delicate blue light, which deepened in hue from the edges inwards. It stood upon a pedestal of its own substance, and seemed as accurately fixed as if rule and plummet had been employed in its erection.Fig. 1represents this beautiful minaret of ice.
ICE MINARET. 1856.
Fig. 1. Ice Minaret.
While we were in sight of the Heisse Platte, a dozen avalanches rushed downwards from its summit. In most cases we were informed of the descent of an avalanche by the sound, but sometimes the white mass was seen glidingdown the rock, and scattering itssmokein the air, long before the sound reached us. It is difficult to reconcile the insignificant appearance presented by avalanches, when seen from a distance, with the volume of sound which they generate; but on this day we saw sufficient to account for the noise. One block of solid ice which we found below the Heisse Platte measured 7 feet 6 inches in length, 5 feet 8 inches in height, and 4 feet 6 inches in depth. A second mass was 10 feet long, 8 feet high, and 6 feet wide. It contained therefore 480 cubic feet of ice, which had been cast to a distance of nearly 1000 yards down the glacier. The shock of such hard and ponderous projectiles against rocks and ice, reinforced by the echoes from the surroundingmountains, will appear sufficient to account for the peals by which their descent is accompanied.
ECHOES OF THE WETTERHORN. 1856.
A second day, in company with Dr. Hooker, completed the examination of this glacier in 1856; after which I parted from my friends, Mr. Huxley intending to rejoin me at the Grimsel. On the morning of the 20th of August I strapped on my knapsack and ascended the green slopes from Grindelwald towards the Great Scheideck. Before reaching the summit I frequently heard the wonderful echoes of the Wetterhorn. Some travellers were in advance of me, and to amuse them an alpine horn was blown. The direct sound was cut off from me by a hill, but the echoes talked down to me from the mountain walls. The sonorous waves arrived after one, two, three, and more reflections, diminishing gradually in intensity, but increasing in softness, as if in its wanderings from crag to crag the sound had undergone a kind of sifting process, leaving all its grossness behind, and returning in delightful flute notes to the ear.
Let us investigate this point a little. If two looking-glasses be placed perfectly parallel to each other, with a lighted candle between them, an infinite series of images of the candle will be seen at both sides, the images diminishing in brightness the further they recede. But if the looking-glasses, instead of being parallel, enclose an angle, a limited number of images only will be seen. The smaller the angle which the reflectors make with each other, or, in other words, the nearer they approach parallelism, the greater will be the number of images observed.
To find the number of images the following is the rule:—Divide 360, or the number of degrees in a circle, by the number of degrees in the angle enclosed by the two mirrors, the quotient will beone morethan the number of images; or, counting the object itself, the quotient is always equal to the number of images plus the object. InFig. 2I havegiven the number and position of the images produced by two mirrors placed at an angle of 45°.a bandb cmark the edges of the mirrors, and 0 represents the candle, which, for the sake of simplicity, I have placed midway between them. Fix one point of a pair of compasses at B, and with the distance B 0 sweep a circle:—all the images will be ranged upon the circumference of this circle. The number of images found by the foregoing rule is 7, and their positions are marked in the figure by the numbers 1, 2, 3, &c.
Fig. 2. Diagram of an angular reflector.
ECHOES EXPLAINED. 1856.
Suppose theearto occupy the place of the eye, and thata sounding bodyoccupies the place of the luminous one, we should then have just as manyechoesas we hadimagesin the former case. These echoes would diminish in loudness just as the images of the candle diminish in brightness. At each reflection a portion both of sound and light is lost; hence the oftener light is reflected the dimmer it becomes, and the oftener sound is reflected the fainter it is.
Now the cliffs of the Wetterhorn are so many rough angular reflectors of the sound: some of them send it back directly to the listener, and we have a first echo; some of them send it on to others from which it is again reflected, forming a second echo. Thus, by repeated reflection, successive echoes are sent to the ear, until, at length, they become so faint as to be inaudible. The sound, as it diminishes in intensity, appears to come from greaterand greater distances, as if it were receding into the mountain solitudes; the final echoes being inexpressibly soft and pure.
REICHENBACH AND HANDECK. 1856.
After crossing the Scheideck I descended to Meyringen, visiting the Reichenbach waterfall on my way. A peculiarity of the descending water here is, that it is broken up in one of the basins into nodular masses, each of which in falling leaves the light foaming mass which surrounds it as a train in the air behind; the effect exactly resembles that of the avalanches of the Jungfrau, in which the more solid blocks of ice shoot forward in advance of the lighter débris, which is held back by the friction of the air.
Next day I ascended the valley of Hasli, and observed upon the rocks and mountains the action of ancient glaciers which once filled the valley to the height of more than a thousand feet above its present level. I paused, of course, at the waterfall of Handeck, and stood for a time upon the wooden bridge which spans the river at its top. The Aar comes gambolling down to the bridge from its parent glacier, takes one short jump upon a projecting ledge, boils up into foam, and then leaps into a chasm, from the bottom of which its roar ascends through the gloom. A rivulet named the Aarlenbach joins the Aar from the left in the very jaws of the chasm: falling, at first, upon a projection at some depth below the edge, and, rebounding from this, it darts at the Aar, and both plunge together like a pair of fighting demons to the bottom of the gorge. The foam of the Aarlenbach is white, that of the Aar is yellow, and this enables the observer to trace the passage of the one cataractthroughthe other. As I stood upon the bridge the sun shone brightly upon the spray and foam; my shadow was oblique to the river, and hence a symmetrical rainbow could not be formed in the spray, but one half of a lovely bow, with its base in the chasm, leaned over against the opposite rocks, the coloursadvancing and retreating as the spray shifted its position. I had been watching the water intently for some time, when a little Swiss boy, who stood beside me, observed, in his trenchant German, "There plunge stones ever downwards." The stones were palpable enough, carried down by the cataract, and sometimes completely breaking loose from it, but I did not see them until my attention was withdrawn from the water.
HUT OF M. DOLLFUSS. 1856.
On my arrival at the Grimsel I found Mr. Huxley already there, and, after a few minutes' conversation, we decided to spend a night in a hut built by M. Dollfuss in 1846, beside the Unteraar glacier, about 2000 feet above the Hospice. We hoped thus to be able to examine the glacier to its origin on the following day. Two days' food and some blankets were sent up from the Hospice, and, accompanied by our guide, we proceeded to the glacier.
HÔTEL DES NEUFCHÂTELOIS. 1856.
Having climbed a great terminal moraine, and tramped for a considerable time amid loose shingle and boulders, we came upon the ice. The finest specimens of "tables" which I have ever seen are to be found upon this glacier—huge masses of clean granite poised on pedestals of ice. Here are also "dirt-cones" of the largest size, and numerous shafts, the forsaken passages of ancient "moulins," some filled with water, others simply with deep blue light. I reserve the description and explanation of both cones and moulins for another place. The surfaces of some of the small pools were sprinkled lightly over with snow, which the water underneath was unable to melt; a coating of snow granules was thus formed, flexible as chain armour, but so close that the air could not escape through it. Some bubbles which had risen through the water had lifted the coating here and there into little rounded domes, which, by gentle pressure, could be shifted hither and thither, and several of them collected into one. We reached the hut, the floor of which appeared to be of the original mountainslab; there was a space for cooking walled off from the sleeping-room, half of which was raised above the floor, and contained a quantity of old hay. The number 2404 mètres, the height, I suppose, of the place above the sea, was painted on the door, behind which were also the names of several well-known observers—Agassiz, Forbes, Desor, Dollfuss, Ramsay, and others—cut in the wood. A loft contained a number of instruments for boring, a surveyor's chain, ropes, and other matters. After dinner I made my way alone towards the junction of the Finsteraar and Lauteraar glaciers, which unite at the Abschwung to form the trunk stream of the Unteraar glacier. Upon the great central moraine which runs between the branches were perched enormous masses of rock, and, under the overhanging ledge of one of these, M. Agassiz had hisHôtel des Neufchâtelois. The rock is still there, bearing traces of names now nearly obliterated by the weather, while the fragments around also bear inscriptions. There in the wilderness, in the gray light of evening, these blurred and faded evidences of human activity wore an aspect of sadness. It was a temple of science now in ruins, and I a solitary pilgrim to the desecrated blocks. As the day declined, rain began to fall, and I turned my face towards my new home; where in due time we betook ourselves to our hay, and waited hopefully for the morning.
But our hopes were doomed to disappointment. A vast quantity of snow fell during the night, and, when we arose, we found the glacier covered, and the air thick with the descending flakes. We waited, hoping that it might clear up, but noon arrived and passed without improvement; our fire-wood was exhausted, the weather intensely cold, and, according to the men's opinion, hopelessly bad; they opposed the idea of ascending further, and we had therefore no alternative but to pack up and move downwards. What was snow at the higher elevations changedto rain lower down, and drenched us completely before we reached the Grimsel. But though thus partially foiled in our design, this visit taught us much regarding the structure and general phenomena of the glacier.
THE RHONE GLACIER. 1856.
The morning of the 24th was clear and calm: we rose with the sun, refreshed and strong, and crossed the Grimsel pass at an early hour. The view from the summit of the pass was lovely in the extreme; the sky a deep blue, the surrounding summits all enamelled with the newly-fallen snow, which gleamed with dazzling whiteness in the sunlight. It was Sunday, and the scene was itself a Sabbath, with no sound to disturb its perfect rest. In a lake which we passed the mountains were mirrored without distortion, for there was no motion of the air to ruffle its surface. From the summit of the Mayenwand we looked down upon the Rhone glacier, and a noble object it seemed,—I hardly know a finer of its kind in the Alps. Forcing itself through the narrow gorge which holds the ice cascade in its jaws, and where it is greatly riven and dislocated, it spreads out in the valley below in such a manner as clearly to reveal to the mind's eye the nature of the forces to which it is subjected. Longfellow's figure is quite correct; the glacier resembles a vast gauntlet, of which the gorge represents the wrist; while the lower glacier, cleft by its fissures into finger-like ridges, is typified by the hand.
Furnishing ourselves with provisions at the adjacent inn, we devoted some hours to the examination of the lower portion of the glacier. The dirt upon its surface was arranged in grooves as fine as if produced by the passage of a rake, while the laminated structure of the deeper ice always corresponded to the superficial grooving. We found several shafts, some empty, some filled with water. At one place our attention was attracted by a singular noise, evidently produced by the forcing of air and water through passages in the body of the glacier; the sound rose andfell for several minutes, like a kind of intermittent snore, reminding one of Hugi's hypothesis that the glacier was alive.
RINGS AROUND THE SUN. 1856.
We afterwards climbed to a point from which the whole glacier was visible to us from its origin to its end. Adjacent to us rose the mighty mass of the Finsteraarhorn, the monarch of the Oberland. The Galenstock was also at hand, while round about thenévéof the glacier a mountain wall projected its jagged outline against the sky. At a distance was the grand cone of the Weisshorn, then, and I believe still, unscaled;[A]further to the left the magnificent peaks of the Mischabel; while between them, in savage isolation, stood the obelisk of the Matterhorn. Near us was the chain of the Furca, all covered with shining snow, while overhead the dark blue of the firmament so influenced the general scene as to inspire a sentiment of wonder approaching to awe. We descended to the glacier, and proceeded towards its source. As we advanced an unusual light fell upon the mountains, and looking upwards we saw a series of coloured rings, drawn like a vivid circular rainbow quite round the sun. Between the orb and us spread a thin veil of cloud on which the circles were painted; the western side of the veil soon melted away, and with it the colours, but the eastern half remained a quarter of an hour longer, and then in its turn disappeared. The crevasses became more frequent and dangerous as we ascended. They were usually furnished with overhanging eaves of snow, from which long icicles depended, and to tread on which might be fatal. We were near the source of the glacier, but the time necessary to reach it was nevertheless indefinite, so great was the entanglement of fissures. We followed one huge chasm for some hundreds of yards, hoping to cross it; but after half an hour's fruitless effort we found ourselves baffled and forced to retrace our steps.
SPIRIT OF THE BROCKEN. 1856.
The sun was sloping to the west, and we thought it wise to return; so down the glacier we went, mingling our footsteps with the tracks of chamois, while the frightened marmots piped incessantly from the rocks. We reached the land once more, and halted for a time to look upon the scene within view. The marvellous blueness of the sky in the earlier part of the day indicated that the air was charged, almost to saturation, with transparent aqueous vapour. As the sun sank the shadow of the Finsteraarhorn was cast through the adjacent atmosphere, which, thus deprived of the direct rays, curdled up into visible fog. The condensed vapour moved slowly along the flanks of the mountain, and poured itself cataract-like into the valley of the Rhone. Here it met the sun again, which reduced it once more to the invisible state. Thus, though there was an incessant supply from the generator behind, the fog made no progress; as in the case of the moving glacier, the end of the cloud-river remained stationary where consumption was equal to supply. Proceeding along the mountain to the Furca, we found the valley at the further side of the pass also filled with fog, which rose, like a wall, high above the region of actual shadow. Once on turning a corner an exclamation of surprise burst simultaneously from my companion and myself. Before each of us and against the wall of fog, stood a spectral image of a man, of colossal dimensions; dark as a whole, but bounded by a coloured outline. We stretched forth our arms; the spectres did the same. We raised our alpenstocks; the spectres also flourished their bâtons. All our actions were imitated by these fringed and gigantic shades. We had, in fact,the Spirit of the Brockenbefore us in perfection.
At the time here referred to I had had but little experience of alpine phenomena. I had been through the Oberland in 1850, but was then too ignorant to learnmuch from my excursion. Hence the novelty of this day's experience may have rendered it impressive: still even now I think there was an intrinsic grandeur in its phenomena which entitles the day to rank with the most remarkable that I have spent among the Alps. At the Furca, to my great regret, the joint ramblings of my friend and myself ended; I parted from him on the mountain side, and watched him descending, till the gray of evening finally hid him from my view.
FOOTNOTES:[A]The Weisshorn was first scaled, by Tyndall, in 1861.—L. C. T.
[A]The Weisshorn was first scaled, by Tyndall, in 1861.—L. C. T.
[A]The Weisshorn was first scaled, by Tyndall, in 1861.—L. C. T.
THE TYROL. 1856.
My subsequent destination was Vienna; but I wished to associate with my journey thither a visit to some of the glaciers of the Tyrol. At Landeck, on the 29th of August, I learned that the nearest glacier was that adjacent to the Gebatsch Alp, at the head of the Kaunserthal; and on the following morning I was on my way towards this valley. I sought to obtain a guide at Kaltebrunnen, but failed; and afterwards walked to the little hamlet of Feuchten, where I put up at a very lonely inn. My host, I believe, had never seen an Englishman, but he had heard of such, and remarked to me in his patois with emphasis, "Die Engländer sind die kühnsten Leute in dieser Welt." Through his mediation I secured a chamois-hunter, named Johann Auer, to be my guide, and next morning I started with this man up the valley. The sun, as we ascended, smote the earth and us with great power; high mountains flanked us on either side, while in front of us, closing the view, was the mass of the Weisskugel, covered with snow. At threeo'clock we came in sight of the glacier, and soon afterwards I made the acquaintance of theSenneror cheesemakers of the Gebatsch Alp.
THE GEBATSCH ALP. 1856.
The chief of these was a fine tall fellow, with free, frank countenance, which, however, had a dash of the mountain wildness in it. His feet were bare, he wore breeches, and fragments of stockings partially covered his legs, leaving a black zone between the upper rim of the sock and the breeches. His feet and face were of the same swarthy hue; still he was handsome, and in a measure pleasant to look upon. He asked me what he could cook for me, and I requested some bread and milk; the former was a month old, the latter was fresh and delicious, and on these I fared sumptuously. I went to the glacier afterwards with my guide, and remained upon the ice until twilight, when we returned, guided by no path, but passing amid crags grasped by the gnarled roots of the pine, through green dells, and over bilberry knolls of exquisite colouring. My guide kept in advance of me singing a Tyrolese melody, and his song and the surrounding scene revived and realised all the impressions of my boyhood regarding the Tyrol.
Milking was over when we returned to the chalet, which now contained four men exclusive of myself and my guide. A fire of pine logs was made upon a platform of stone, elevated three feet above the floor; there was no chimney, as the smoke found ample vent through the holes and fissures in the sides and roof. The men were all intensely sunburnt, the legitimate brown deepening into black with beard and dirt. The chief senner prepared supper, breaking eggs into a dish, and using his black fingers to empty the shell when the albumen was refractory. A fine erect figure he was as he stood in the glowing light of the fire. All the men were smoking, and now and then a brand was taken from the fire to light a renewed pipe, anda ruddy glare flung thereby over the wild countenance of the smoker. In one corner of the chalet, and raised high above the ground, was a large bed, covered with clothes of the most dubious black-brown hue; at one end was a little water-wheel turned by a brook, which communicated motion to a churndash which made the butter. The beams and rafters were covered with cheeses, drying in the warm smoke. The senner, at my request, showed me his storeroom, and explained to me the process of making cheese, its interest to me consisting in its bearing upon the question of slaty cleavage. Three gigantic masses of butter were in the room, and I amused my host by calling them butter-glaciers. Soon afterwards a bit of cotton was stuck in a lump of grease, which was placed in a lantern, and the wick ignited; the chamois-hunter took it, and led the way to our resting-place, I having previously declined a good-natured invitation to sleep in the big black bed already referred to.