The Crystal Hunters Part 4

"Snow is ice in the form of light flocculent crystals, is it not? Why, at home, if you take up moist snow and press it hard in your hands, you can almost turn it into ice. If you placed it in a press, and applied much force, it would become perfectly clear ice. Well, there's pressure enough here to turn it into ice; and besides, the snow is always melting in the hot sun, and then freezing again at night."

"Yes, I see!" cried Saxe; "but it does seem queer. Why, we've got summer here, with flowers and bees and b.u.t.terflies, and if we go down to that glacier, I suppose we can step on to winter."

"Yes, my lad; and if we like to climb a little higher up the ice, we can place ourselves in such severe winter that we should be frozen to death."

"Then we will not go," said Saxe, laughing. "You told me one day--No, you didn't, it was in a story I read, 'man is best as he is.' But I say, Mr Dale, how about the river? doesn't it come from the glacier?"

"Yes, of course. These vast glaciers are the sources of the great Swiss and Italian rivers. The Rhine and the Rhone both begin up in the mountains here, and the Aar and the Reuss start pretty close to them.

When we get down here you will see how this stream runs from a little ice-cave."

"But what makes it so dirty?"

"My good fellow, we have come to climb, and my name is not Barlow. You must read and search out these things. You know how that stone or ma.s.s fell with a roar lower down?"

"Not likely to forget it, sir," replied Saxe, with a laugh.

"Well, the stones are always falling from the bare sides of the gorge; they drop on to the glacier, and in course of time are washed by the melting ice into the creva.s.ses and down to the bare rock beneath the glacier. There they glide down, with its weight upon them, right over the rock, and the surface is worn off from the fallen stone and the bed rock in a thin paste, which is washed away by the glacier. Then, as it descends, it of course discolours the water."

"Shall we go down to the toe of the glacier!" said the guide.

"Yes; come along."

"Can we trust the young herr to descend?"

Dale leaned forward to gaze down the rugged slope, which was excessively steep, but broken up into rift and gully, offering plenty of foot and hand-hold.

"What do you think, Saxe?" he said. "Can you manage to get down there?"

"Get down there?" said the lad contemptuously; "why, I'd race you to the bottom."

"No doubt, and be down first," said Dale quietly; "but I should be ready to go on, and you would want carrying to the nearest chalet to wait for a surgeon."

"What, after getting down that bit of a place?"

"You stupid fellow," said Dale testily; "that bit of a place is a precipice of five hundred feet. How am I to impress upon you that everything here is far bigger than you think? Look here," he continued, pointing: "do you see that cow yonder, on that bit of green slope beside those overhanging rocks?"

"No; I can see a little dog by a heap of stones."

"That will do for an example," said Dale. "Here, Melchior, is not that a cow just across the stream there?"

"Wait a moment," cried Saxe eagerly. "I say it's a little dog. Who's right?"

"You are both wrong," said the guide, smiling. "There is a man here has a chalet behind the pines. He comes up the valley with his cattle for the summer, when the snow is gone."

"Is there snow here in winter, then?" said Saxe.

"The valley is nearly full in winter. No one can come up here."

"But that isn't a cow," cried Saxe, pointing.

"No," said the guide, smiling; "it is Simon Andregg's big bull."

"Well!" cried Saxe, shading his eyes and staring down at the animal, which looked small enough to be a dog.

"You don't believe him?" said Dale, laughing.

"Oh, I don't know," said Saxe; "I suppose I do. But I was thinking that he might have made a mistake. Shall I go first?"

"No, herr; I am the guide," said Melchior quietly; and he began the descent pretty rapidly, but stopped at the foot of each more difficult part to look up and wait for the others. Sometimes he drove the sharp end of his ice-axe into the earth or some crevice, and held it there to act as a step for the others to descend; and at other times he pressed himself against the rock and offered his shoulders as resting-places for their feet, constantly on the watch to lessen the difficulties and guard against dangers in a place where a slip of a few feet might have resulted in the unfortunate person who fell rolling lower with increasing impetus, and the slip developing into a terrible accident.

"It is farther than I thought," said Saxe, as they reached the bottom of the steep bluff from which they had viewed the glacier; and he stepped back a few yards to look up. "The places really are so much bigger than they look. Why, I say, Mr Dale, the glacier seems quite high up from here, and ever so much farther off."

"And it will look bigger still when we reach the cave where the river comes out."

"So!" said Melchior quietly; and he went on, now down the stony slope of the valley, to reach the river bed near its source, with the sides of the thal seeming to grow steeper and higher, and one of the waterfalls they were near infinitely more beautiful, for they had now reached the point necessary for seeing the lovely iris which spanned the cascade, turning its seething spray into a segment of an arch of the most vivid colours, at which the lad seemed disposed to gaze for an indefinite time.

"Vorwarts," said the guide quietly; and they obeyed, following his lead till they reached the spot where the clear waters of the fall glided into the dingy stream, and then followed the latter up and up for quite half an hour before Saxe stopped short, and took off his straw hat to wipe his steaming forehead, as he gazed up at the end of the glacier; he was now so low down that the surface was invisible, and facing him there was a curve rising up and up, looking like a blunted set of natural steps.

"Well?" said Dale, inquiringly.

"I can't make it out," said Saxe, rather breathlessly. "It seems as if that thing were playing games with us, and growing bigger and shrinking away farther at every step one takes."

"Yes," said Dale, "it is giving you a lesson that you will not easily forget."

"But it looked quite small when we were up there," cried Saxe, nodding toward the tower-like bluff they had climbed, again at the top of the glacier.

"Yes, and now it looks quite big, Saxe; and when you have been on it and have walked a few miles upon its surface here and there--"

"Miles?"

"Yes, my boy, miles. Then you will begin to grasp how big all this is, and what vast deserts of ice and snow there are about us in the mountains. But come along; we have not much farther to go to reach the foot."

But it took them quite a quarter of an hour over rounded, scratched and polished ma.s.ses of rock which were in places cut into grooves, and to all this Dale drew attention.

"Do you see what it means?" he said.

"No," said Saxe, "only that it's very bad walking, now it's so steep."

"But don't you see that--?"

"Yes, I do," cried Saxe, interrupting him; "you mean that this has been all rubbed smooth by the ice and stones grinding over it; but how could it?--the ice couldn't go up hill."

"No, it comes down."

"Then--was it once as far as here?"

"Ever so much farther when I was a boy," said the guide. "It has been shrinking for years. Mind, herr; it is very slippery here. Let me help you."

He hooked his ice-axe into a crevice, and held out his hand, by whose help Saxe mounted beside him, and here descending close to the water they stepped from stone to stone, with the ice towering more and more above their heads, till they were close up, and even below it, for they had entered a low, flat arch, which just admitted them standing upright, and after a few steps into what Saxe called a blue gloom, they stood gazing into the azure depths of the cavern, which grew darker till they were purple and then utterly black. Then they listened to the gurgle and babble of the tiny river, as it came rus.h.i.+ng and das.h.i.+ng over the rock in many an eddy and swirl, while from far away up in the darkness there were mysterious whisperings and musical echoes that were strange to hear.