ICE-WORK, PRESENT AND PAST CHAPTER I ALPINE GLACIERS, PRESENT AND PAST AMONG the highest peaks of the Bernese Oberland is a great upland valley, almost a natural amphitheatre. It is a gathering-ground of glaciers. Four of these, larger and more definite than the rest, descend from snowy saddles, which are separated by grand peaksmasses of steep ice broken by precipices and seamed. by outcropping ridges of dark rock. The white floor of the valley, at this meeting-place of the frozen waters, is comparatively level. It lies some two thousand feet below the snowy saddles, and above them the peaks tower up about as high again. Minor tributaries of frozen rivers issue from shallower recesses in the flanks of the peaks themselves: and through a single opening towards the south, as through a portal, the united ice-streams glide slowly forth, forming the Great Aletsch Glacier, the largest in the Alps. Such a hidden group of glaciers is far from rare in the great mountain chains. To speak of the Alps alone, the basins of the Gorner and the Fee Glaciers present a certain resemblance to that which we have described; those of the Argentière and the Northern Miage are yet more like it; while the Mer de Glace, among the aiguilles of Mont Blanc, is the nearest rival of this "Place de la Concorde of Nature," as it has been not inappropriately termed. One of the most striking prospects of this courtyard of the ice-king's palace is obtained from the Concordia hut, a rude chalet at the base of a rocky spur, in which the night is passed before making the ascent of the Jungfrau and sundry other peaks. From beneath this spot for a considerable distance the wide field of névé1 shelves so gently as to seem nearly a plain, and its surface is almost unbroken. It is only as the slope steepens, on approaching the base of the actual peaks or the foot of the curtain walls, that crevasses become frequent. Then the frozen snow, for here it can hardly be called ice, is riven into strange forms, and usually one chasm-named the Bergschrundwider and more persistent than the rest, severs the snow and ice of the glacier basin from the snow and ice of the actual peaks. Above this rift the solidified water is motionless, for it is fast frozen to the rocks; below it the whole mass creeps slowly downwards towards the valley of the Rhone. The snow which 1 The name applied to the material of the upper part of a glacier, where it is more nearly in the condition of frozen snow. The German terin is firn. falls on the steep slopes of the peaks soon shoots down in avalanches to augment the accumulation below, and a thick layer gathers annually all over the wide expanse of the basin, for at this elevation rain is not common. So the glacier is born, so it is nourished. I have described its birthplace, I have dwelt on its beginning in some little detail, because in the pages which follow it will be necessary more than once to call up before our minds a similar scene. The ice, as has been said, is at first comparatively smooth and free from débris. Here and there, however, a solitary boulder forms a black spot on its pure surface, or a small scatter of them trails forth from the foot of some rocky spur which is more prominent and precipitous than its fellows. These boulders after a time become more frequent, till at last they begin to form a kind of selvage on the edge of the icestream. Obviously, as the valley which it descends becomes better defined and sinks deeper into the mountain mass, the crags and precipitous slopes on either hand rise higher and barer, and stones more often come thundering down from them or are swept along by avalanches of snow. Now and again a block, more headlong than the rest, closes its career by one vast leap which lands it out on the glacier some hundreds of feet away from the rocks; but the majority fall on or near the edge, so that on this a mound of boulders, large and small, together with grit and earth, gradually accumulates and is slowly |