Rivers of Ice

Chapter Nine.

A Solid Stream

There is a river of ice in Switzerland, which, taking its rise on the hoary summit of Mont Blanc, flows through a sinuous mountain-channel, and terminates its grand career by liquefaction in the vale of Chamouni. A mighty river it is in all respects, and a wonderful one—full of interest and mystery and apparent contradiction. It has a grand volume and sweep, varying from one to four miles in width, and is about twelve miles long, with a depth of many hundreds of feet. It is motionless to the eye, yet it descends into the plain continually. It is hard and unyielding in its nature, yet it flows as really and steadily, if not with as lithe a motion, as a liquid river. It is not a half solid mass like mud, which might roll slowly down an incline; it is solid, clear, transparent, brittle ice, which refuses to bend, and cracks sharply under a strain; nevertheless, it has its waves and rapids, cross-currents, eddies, and cascades, which, seen from a moderate distance, display all the grace and beauty of flowing water—as if a grand river in all its varied parts, calm and turbulent, had been actually and suddenly arrested in its course and frozen to the bottom.

It is being melted perpetually too. The fierce sun of summer sends millions of tiny streamlets down into its interior, which collect, augment, cut channels for themselves through the ice, and finally gush into the plain from its lower end in the form of a muddy river. Even in winter this process goes on, yet the ice-river never melts entirely away, but holds on its cold, stately, solemn course from year to year—has done so for unknown ages, and will probably do so to the end of time. It is picturesque in its surroundings, majestic in its motion, tremendous in its action, awful in its sterility, and, altogether, one of the most impressive and sublime works of God.

This gigantic glacier, or stream of ice, springing, as it does, from the giant-mountain of Europe, is appropriately hemmed in, and its mighty force restrained, by a group of Titans, whose sharp aiguilles, or needle-like peaks, shoot upward to a height little short of their rounded and white-headed superior, and from whose wild gorges and riven sides tributary ice-rivers flow, and avalanches thunder incessantly. Leaving its cradle on the top of Mont Blanc, the great river sweeps round the Aiguille du Géant; and, after receiving its first name of Glacier du Géant from that mighty obelisk of rock, which rises 13,156 feet above the sea, it passes onward to welcome two grand tributaries, the Glacier de Léchaud, from the rugged heights of the Grandes Jorasses, and the Glacier du Talèfre from the breast of the Aiguille du Talèfre and the surrounding heights. Thus augmented, the river is named the Mer de Glace, or sea of ice, and continues its downward course; but here it encounters what may be styled “the narrows,” between the crags at the base of the Aiguille Charmoz and Aiguille du Moine, through which it steadily forces its way, though compressed to much less than half its width by the process. In one place the Glacier du Géant is above eleven hundred yards wide; that of the Léchaud is above eight hundred; that of Talèfre above six hundred—the total, when joined, two thousand five hundred yards; and this enormous mass of solid ice is forced through a narrow neck of the valley, which is, in round numbers, only nine hundred yards wide! Of course the ice-river must gain in depth what it loses in breadth in this gorge, through which it travels at the rate of twenty inches a day. Thereafter, it tumbles ruggedly to its termination in the vale of Chamouni, under the name of the Glacier des Bois.

The explanation of the causes of the rise and flow of this ice-river we will leave to the genial and enthusiastic Professor, who glories in dilating on such matters to Captain Wopper, who never tires of the dilations.

Huge, however, though this glacier of the Mer de Glace be, it is only one of a series of similar glaciers which constitute the outlets to that vast reservoir of ice formed by the wide range of Mont Blanc, where the snows of successive winters are stored, packed, solidified, and rendered, as it were, self-regulating in their supplies of water to the plains. And the Mont Blanc range itself is but a portion of the great glacial world of Switzerland, the area occupied by which is computed at 900 square miles. Two-thirds of these send their waters to the sea through the channel of the Rhine. The most extensive of these glaciers is the Aletsch glacier, which is fifteen miles in length. It is said that above six hundred distinct glaciers have been reckoned in Switzerland.

This, good reader, is but a brief reference to the wonders of the glacial world. It is but a scratching of the surface. There is a very mine of interesting, curious, and astonishing facts below the surface. Nature is prodigal of her information to those who question her closely, correctly, and perseveringly. Even to those who observe her carelessly, she is not altogether dumb. She is generous; and the God of Nature has caused it to be written for our instruction that, “His works are wonderful, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.”

We may not, however, prolong our remarks on the subject of ice-rivers at this time. Our travellers at Chamouni are getting ready to start, and it is our duty at present to follow them.

Chapter Ten.

The First Excursion

“A Splendid morning!” exclaimed Dr George Lawrence, as he entered the Salle à manger with an obviously new alpenstock in his hand.

“Jolly!” replied Lewis Stoutley, who was stooping at the moment to button one of his gaiters.

Lewis was addicted to slang, not by any means an uncommon characteristic of youth!

“The man,” he said, with some bitterness, “who invented big buttons and little button-holes should have had his nose skewered with a button-hook. He was an ass!”

In order to relieve his feelings and accomplish his ends, Lewis summarily enlarged the holes with his penknife.

“And round buttons, too,” he said, indignantly; “what on earth was the use of making round buttons when flat ones had been invented? A big hole and a flat button will hold against anything—even against Scotch whins and heather. There, now, that abominable job is done.”

“You are fond of strong language, Lewie,” said Lawrence, as he examined the spike at the end of his alpenstock.

“I am. It relieves my feelings.”

“But don’t you think it weakens your influence on occasions when nothing but strong language will serve? You rob yourself of the power, you know, to increase the force of it.”

“Oh bother! don’t moralise, man, but let’s have your opinion of the weather, which is an all-important subject just now.”

“I have already given my opinion as to that,” said Lawrence, “but here comes one who will give us an opinion of value.—He is in capital time.”

“Good morning, Antoine.”

Their guide for the day, Antoine Grennon, a fine stalwart specimen of his class, returned the salutation, and added that it was a very fine morning.

“Capital, isn’t it?” cried Lewis, cheerfully, for he had got over the irritation caused by the buttons. “Couldn’t be better; could it?”

The guide did not admit that the weather could not be better.

“You look doubtful, Antoine,” said Lawrence. “Don’t you think the day will keep up?”

“Keep up!” exclaimed Lewis; “why, the sky is perfectly clear. Of course it will. I never saw a finer day, even in England. Why do you doubt it, Antoine?”

The guide pointed to a small cloud that hung over the brow of one of the higher peaks.

“Appearances are sometimes deceitful in this country,” he said. “I don’t doubt the fineness of the day at present, but—”

He was interrupted here by the sudden and noisy entrance of Captain Wopper and the Professor, followed by the mad artist, whose name, by the way, was Slingsby.

“No, no,” said the Captain to the Professor, with whom he had already become very intimate, “it won’t do to part company. If the Jardang is too far for the ladies, we will steer for the Mairdyglass, an’ cross over to the what’s-’is-name—”

“Chapeau,” said the Professor.

“Ah! the shappo,” continued the Captain, “and so down by the glacier dez boys—”

“The what?” asked Lewis, with a half-suppressed smile.

“The glacier dez boys, youngster,” repeated the Captain, stoutly.

“Oh, I see; you mean the Glacier des Bois?” said Lewis, suppressing the smile no longer.

“What I mean, young man,” said the Captain, sternly, “is best known to myself. You and other College-bred coxcombs may call it day bwa, if you like, but I have overhauled the chart, and there it’s spelt d-e-s, which sounds dez, and b-o-i-s, which seafarin’ men pronounce boys, so don’t go for to cross my hawse again, but rather join me in tryin’ to indooce the Professor to putt off his trip to the Jardang, an’ sail in company with us for the day.”

“I will join you heartily in that,” said Lewis, turning to the man of science, who stood regarding the Captain with an amiable smile, as a huge Newfoundland dog might regard a large mastiff; “but why is our proposed excursion to the Jardin to be altered?”

“Because,” said the Professor, “your amiable sister—I beg pardon, cousin—with that irresistible power of suasion which seems inherent in her nature, has prevailed on Mademoiselle Horetzki to join the party, and Mademoiselle is too delicate—sylph-like—to endure the fatigues of so long an excursion over the ice. Our worthy guide suggests that it would afford more pleasure to the ladies—and of course, therefore, to the gentlemen—if you were to make your first expedition only to the Montanvert which is but a two hours’ climb from Chamouni, picnic there, cross the Mer de Glace, which is narrow at that point, and descend again to Chamouni by the side of the Glacier des Bois, where you can behold the great moraines, and also the source of the river Arveiron. This would be a pleasant and not too fatiguing round, and I, who might perhaps be an encumbrance to you, will prosecute my inquiries at the Jardin alone.”

“Impossible,” exclaimed Lewis, “the Captain is right when he observes that we must not part company. As my mother says, we are a giddy crew, and will be the better of a little scientific ballast to keep us from capsizing into a crevasse. Do come, my dear sir, if it were only out of charity, to keep us in order.”

To this entreaty Lawrence and the artist added their persuasions, which were further backed by the eloquence of Emma Gray and Nita Horetzki, who entered at the moment radiant with the flush of life’s dawning day, and irresistible in picturesque mountain attire, the chief characteristics of which consisted in an extensive looping up of drapery, and an ostentatious display of those staffs called alpenstocks, five feet long, tipped with chamois horn, which are an indispensable requisite in Alpine work.

“Oh! you muss go,” said Nita, in silvery tones and disjointed English. “If you go not, monsieur, I go not!”

“That of course decides the question, Mademoiselle,” said the gallant Professor, with one of his blandest smiles, “I shall accompany you with pleasure. But I have one little request to make. My time at Chamouni is short; will you permit me, on arriving at the Mer de Glace, to prosecute my inquiries? I am here to ask questions of Nature, and must do so with perseverance and patience. Will you allow me to devote more of my attention to her than to yourself?”

“H’m! well—what you say, Mademoiselle Gray?” demanded Nita, with an arch look at her companion. “Is the Professor’s request reasonable?”

To this Emma replied that as Nature was, upon the whole, a more important lady than either of them, she thought it was reasonable; whereupon the Professor agreed to postpone his visit to the Jardin, and devote his day to fixing stakes and making observations on the Mer de Glace, with a view to ascertaining the diurnal rate of speed at which the glacier flowed.

“You spoke of putting certain questions to Nature, Professor,” said Lawrence, when the party were slowly toiling up the mountain-side. “Have they not already been put to her, and satisfactorily answered some time ago?”

“They have been put,” replied the Professor, “by such learned men as Saussure, Agassiz, Rendu, Charpentier, and by your own countryman Forbes, and others, and undoubtedly their questions have received distinct answers, insomuch that our knowledge of the nature and action of glacial ice is now very considerable. But, my dear sir, learned men have not been agreed as to what Nature’s replies mean, nor have they exhausted the subject; besides, no true man of science is quite satisfied with merely hearing the reports of others, he is not content until he has met and conversed with Nature face to face. I wish, therefore, to have a personal interview with her in these Alps, or rather,” continued the Professor, in a more earnest tone, “I do wish to see the works of my Maker with my own eyes, and to hear His voice with the ears of my own understanding.”

“Your object, then, is to verify, not to discover?” said Lawrence.

“It is both. Primarily to verify; but the man of science always goes forth with the happy consciousness that the mine in which he proposes to dig is rich in gems, and that, while seeking for one sort, he may light upon another unexpectedly.”