Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland Part 8

The diligence reached the end of the by-road leading to Villaz in about half an hour, and all the fever of Geneva and Annecy seemed to fly away before the freshness of this green little lane, with clematis in full flower pervading the hedges, and huge cl.u.s.ters of young nuts peeping out, and promising later delights to fortunate pa.s.sers-by. But, alas!

the little lane soon came to an end, and as I faced the fields of corn up the mountain-side, the hot thunderous air came rolling down in palpable billows, and oppressive clouds took possession of the surrounding hills. Three-quarters of an hour brought me to Villaz, a close collection of houses on the hill-side, with arched stone gateways leading into the farmyards,--a fortified style of agricultural building which seems to prevail in that district. After an amount of experience in out-of-the-way places which makes me very cautious in saying that one in particular is dirtier than a dozen others, I venture to say that the _auberge_ of Villaz is the most squalid I have come across; and I would not feed there again, except in very robust health, even for a new glaciere. Still, it was absolutely necessary to eat something, and the landlady promised coffee and bread. She showed me first into the kitchen; but as it was also the place where the domestics slept, with many quadrupeds, I declined to sit there. Upon this she led me to the _salon_, where the window resisted all our efforts for some little time, and then opened upon such a choice a.s.sortment of abominations, that I fled without my baggage. The next attempt she made was the one remaining room of the house, the family bedroom; but that was so much worse than all, that I took final refuge on the balcony, a sort of ante-room to the hen-house. The c.o.c.ks at the _auberge_ of Villaz are the loudest, the hens the most talkative, and the cats the most s.h.a.ggy and presuming, I have ever met with. Even here, however, all was not unmitigated darkness; for they ground the coffee while the water was boiling, and the consequent decoction was admirable. Moreover, the bread had a skin of such thickness and impervious toughness, that the inside was presumably clean.

Aviernoz lay about an hour farther. Almost as soon as I left Villaz, the thunderstorm came on in earnest, with sheets of rain, a regular _Wolkenbruch_.[66] The rain was most refres.h.i.+ng; but lightning is not a pleasant companion in presence of a bright ice-axe, and I was glad when the houses of Aviernoz came in sight. The village had the appearance of being lost; and the houses were scattered about so irregularly, that it was difficult to know which was the best point to make for. The road studiously avoided the scattered houses, and the _Mairie_ seemed especially difficult to find. When at length it was found, the maire, like the queen in the poets, was in the kitchen; and he sat affably on the end of a bench and read the letter of introduction aloud, asking me, at the conclusion, how was our friend Dugravel, a man amazing in many ways. When I confessed that I had only made the acquaintance of the amazing man the night before, and therefore did not feel competent to give any reliable account of the state of his health, beyond the fact that he seemed to be in excellent spirits, the maire looked upon me evidently with great respect, as having won so far upon a great character like Dugravel in so short a time, and determined to accompany me himself. Meantime, we must drink some kirsch. The maire was a young man, spare and vehement.

He talked with a headlong impetuosity which caused him to be always hot, and his hair limp and errant; and at the end of each sentence there were so many laggard halves of words to come out together, with so little breath to bring them out, that he eventuated in a stuttering scream. His clothes were of such a description, that the most speculative Israelite would not have gone beyond copper for his wardrobe, all standing. There were two women in the house, to whom he was exceedingly imperious: one of them received his orders and his vehemence with a certain amount of defiance, but the other was subdued and obedient, and I believe her to have been the mayoress. He poured himself and his household at my feet, knocked a child one way and his wife another, and, from the air with which he dragged off the tablecloth they had laid, and ordered a better, and swept away the gla.s.ses because they were not clean enough--which in itself was sufficiently true,--and screamed for poached eggs for monsieur, and then impetuously ate them himself--I fancy that he might have been taught to play Petrucio with success.

When we had sat for a quarter of an hour or so, a heavy-looking young man, in fustian clothes and last year's linen, came into the room, and was introduced as the communal schoolmaster. We shook hands with much impressment on the strength of the similarity of our professions, and the maire explained that the new arrival acted also as his secretary, for there was really so much writing to be done that it was beyond his own powers; and as the schoolmaster lived _en pension_ at the _Mairie_, it was very convenient. M. Rosset, the schoolmaster, stated that he had heard us, as he sat in his room, talking of the proposed visit to the glaciere, and he should much wish to accompany us. We both expressed the warmest satisfaction; but the maire suggested--how about the boys? That, M. Rosset said, was simple enough. The world would go to the school at nine o'clock, and, finding no schoolmaster, would go home again, or otherwise employ itself; and he could have school on the weekly holiday, to make up for the lost day. This weekly holiday is universally on Thursday, he said, because that day divides the week so well; and I failed to persuade him that there was a commemoration intended in the choice of that day, as in the observance of Friday and Sunday. The maire utterly refused to take a cord, on the ground that there was no possibility of such a thing being of the least use. Fortunately, I had now my own axe, which in more able hands had mounted more than once Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, so I had not the usual fight to procure that instrument.

Half an hour from the _Mairie_, when we had well commenced the steep ascent of the mountain-side, the maire turned suddenly round and exclaimed, 'But the inspector!' Rosset was a sallow man, but he contrived to turn white, while M. Metral (the maire) explained to me that the inspector of schools was to visit Aviernoz that day. The schoolmaster recovered before long, and said he should inform the inspector that a famous _savant_ had come from England, and required that the maire and the _inst.i.tuteur_ should accompany him to the glaciere, to aid him in making scientific observations. In order that he might have doc.u.mentary proof to advance, he asked for my card, and made me write on it my college and university in full.

As I have already said, the maire's style of talking required a good deal of breath, and so it was not unnatural that the ascent should reduce him to silence. The schoolmaster talked freely about scholastic affairs, and gave me an account of the ordinary tariff in village schools, though each commune may alter the prices of its school if it please. Under seven years of age, children pay 4 francs a year, or, for shorter periods than a year, at the rate of 75 centimes a month; between seven and thirteen, 6 francs a year, or 1 franc a month; from thirteen to eighteen, 8 francs a year, or 1 f. 50 c. a month. There is the same difficulty in France, of course, as with us, in keeping children at school after they are old enough to earn a few centimes by cattle-keeping; and the Ministry of Education had shortly before addressed questions to every schoolmaster in the country, asking what remedy each could suggest. My present friend had replied, that if the Government would give the education gratis, something might be done; but he had expressed his opinion that nothing short of an actual subsidy to parents of children beyond eight or nine years of age would ensure a general improvement.

Having given me this information, he observed that it was every man's business to learn, though he and I might be teachers also, and therefore he was sure monsieur would pardon him if he asked what those black patches on monsieur's hands might mean,--pointing to certain large areas of Epsom plaster which covered the tokens of many glacieres. When his mind was set at rest as to this phenomenon, the maire called a halt, and took his turn of talking. He began to tell me about himself and his wealth, Rosset backing him up and putting in the most telling parts. He had very extensive property, and the more level parts of it were certainly valuable, consisting of 200 _journaux_ of good arable land: the forests through which we walked were his, and he possessed three _montagnes_ and chalets higher up on the mountain. The glaciere was his own property; and two years ago he had discovered another in the neighbourhood, which he had not since visited. He was a.s.sisted in his capacity of maire by twelve councillors--in a larger commune it would have been fifteen--and the council met four times in the year. If it was desirable that they should meet on any other occasion, he must write to the prefect of the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt for permission, specifying the business which they wished to conduct, and to this specified business they must confine themselves entirely. Then he wished to know, had we maires such as he in England? Hereupon I drew a fancy picture of the Lord Mayor of London, receiving the Queen and the Royal Family in general in a friendly way, and giving them a dinner,--which, he observed, must cost a good deal, a great deal. However, he looked round upon his fields and houses and mountains, and seemed to think that he could himself stand a considerable drain upon his purse for the reception of royalty; and possibly he is now anxious that the Emperor should pa.s.s that way, during the five years to which the tenure of the mayoralty is restricted. Both of my companions were strong in their French sympathies--the one because under the new rule all communal affairs were so much better organised, the other because a wonderful change for the better had taken place in the government superintendence of schools. Theirs was formerly an odd corner of a kingdom that did not care much about them, and was not h.o.m.ogeneous; it was now an integral part of a well-ordered empire. They confessed that the present state of things cost them much more in taxes, &c., excepting in the upper mountains, where Rosset had a cousin who paid even less than under Sardinian rule.

Of course, we talked a little on Church questions; and they were astonished to hear that I was not only an ecclesiastic, but an ordained priest,--a sort of thing which they had fancied did not exist in the English Church. Rosset said the _cures_ of small communes had about 40 a year, but I must have more than that, or I could not afford to travel so far from home. Had I already said the ma.s.s that morning? Had I my robes in the _sac_ I had left at the _Mairie_? Was the red book they had seen in my hands (Badeker's _Schweiz_) a Breviary? They branched off to matters of doctrine, and discussed them warmly; but some things they so accommodatingly understated, and others they stated so fairly, that I was able to tell them they were excellent Anglicans.

Higher up in the forest, we were nearly overwhelmed by a party of charcoal-porters, who came down with their _traineaux_ like a black avalanche. A _traineau_ is nothing more than a wooden sledge, on two runners, which are turned up in front, to the height of a yard, to keep the cargo in its place. In the more level parts the porter is obliged to drag this, but on the steep zigzags its own weight is sufficient to send it down; and here the porter places himself in front, with his back leaning against the sacks of charcoal and the turned-up runners, and the whole ma.s.s descends headlong, the man's legs going at a wild pace, and now one foot, now the other, steering a judicious course at the turns of the zigzags. The charcoal is made by Italians, who live on polenta and cheese high up in the mountains, and bring their manufacture down to a certain distance, after which the porters take it in charge. The men we saw told us that by hard work they could make four journeys in the day, earning a franc by each; out of which, as they said, they must support stomach and boots, one journey making them ready for a meal, and eight journeys finis.h.i.+ng a pair of soles.

It cost us an hour and a half to reach the maire's first chalet, where we were to lunch on such food as the old woman who managed it might have on hand; that is to say, possibly bread, and, beyond that, milk only, in some shape or other. The forms under which milk can be taught to appear are manifold. A young Swiss student, who in the madness of his pa.s.sion for beetle-hunting had spent fifteen days in a small chalet at Anzeindaz, sleeping each night on the hay,[67] gave me, some time since, a list of the various foods on which he lived and grew fat. The following is the _carte_, as he arranged it:--

Viandes. Vins.

Du seret. Du lait de vache.[68]

Du caille. Du lait froid.

Du beurre. Du lait de chevre.

Du fromage gras. Pet.i.t lait.

Du fromage mi-gras. De la creme.

Du fromage maigre. Du lait de beurre.[69]

Tome de vache. Pet.i.t lait de chevre.

Tome de chevre.

_Pour les Cochons_.

Du lait gate.

Cuite.

Some of the solids and fluids in the earlier part of this _carte_ we felt tolerably sure of finding at the maire's chalet, and accordingly any amount of cream and _seret_ proved to be forthcoming. The maire a.s.serted that _cerac_ was the true name of this recommendable article of food, _cere_ being the patois for the original word. Others had told us that the real word was _serre_, meaning _compressed_ curds; but the French writers who treat learnedly of cheese-making in the _Annales de Chimie_ adopt the form _serets_; and in the _Annales Scientifiques de l'Auvergne_ I find both _seret_ and _serai_, from the Latin _serum_. There was also bread, which arrived when we were sitting down to our meal: it had been baked in a huge ring, for convenience of carriage, and was brought up from the low-lands on a stick across a boy's shoulder. When the old woman thought it safe to expose a greater dainty to our attacks, at a later period of the meal, she brought out a pot of _caille_, a delightful luxury which prevails in the form of nuggets of various size floating in sour whey. Owing to a general want of table apparatus, we placed the pot of caille on a broken wall, and speared the nuggets with our pocket-knives.

After the meal, the two Frenchmen found themselves wet and exceedingly cold; for Frenchmen have not yet learned the blessing of flannel s.h.i.+rts under a broiling sun. They set to work to dry themselves after an original fas.h.i.+on. The fire was little more than a collection of smouldering embers, confined within three stone walls about a foot high; so they took each a one-legged stool--_chaises des vaches_, or _chaise des montagnes_--and attached themselves to the stools by the usual leathern bands round the hips; then they cautiously planted the prods of the stools in the middle of the embers, maintaining an unstable equilibrium by resting their own legs on the top of the walls. Here they sat, smoking and being smoked, till they were dry and warm. Of course, in case of a slip or an inadvertent movement, they would have gone sprawling into the fire. A well-known Swiss botanist, who has seen many strange sleeping-places in the course of sixty years of flower-hunting in the mountains of Vaud and Valais, has told me that on one occasion he had reached with great difficulty the only chalet in the neighbourhood of his day's researches, at a late hour of the night, the whole mountain being soaked with rain. It was a little upland chalet, which the people had deserted for the autumn and winter; and meantime a mud avalanche had taken possession, and covered the floor to a depth of several inches. No plank was to be found for lying on; but he discovered a broken one-legged stool, and on this he sat and slept, propped as well as might be in a corner. It is difficult to say which would be worse--a fall from the stool by daylight into the embers of a wood fire, or the shuddering slimy waking about midnight, after a nod more vigorous than the rest, to find oneself plunged in eight cold inches of soft mud.

About half an hour beyond the chalet, we found the mouth of the glaciere, on a large plateau almost bare of vegetation, and showing the live rock at the surface. They told me that in a strong winter there would be an average of 12 feet of snow on the ground here.[70] The glaciere itself is approached by descending one side of a deep pit, whose circ.u.mference is larger than that of any other of the pit-glacieres I have seen. A few yards off there is a smaller shaft in the rock, which we afterwards found to communicate with the glaciere.

The NW. side of the larger pit, being the side at the bottom of which is the arch of entrance, is vertical, and we spent the time necessary for growing cool in measuring the height of this face of rock from above.

The plummet ran out 115 feet of string, and struck the slope of snow, down which the descent to the cave must be made, about 6 feet above the junction of the snow with the floor of the glaciere, which was visible from the S. side of the edge of the pit; so that the total depth from the surface of the rock to the ice-floor was 121 feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIeRE OF GRAND ANU, NEAR ANNECY.]

When we were sufficiently cool, we scrambled down the side of the pit opposite to that in which the archway lies, finding the rock extremely steep, and then came to a slope of 72 feet of snow, completely exposed to the weather, which landed us at the mouth of the glaciere. The arch is so large, that we could detect the change of light in the cave, caused by the pa.s.sage of clouds across the sun, and candles were not necessary, excepting in the pits shortly to be described. We saw at once that rapid thaw was going on somewhere or other; and when we stepped off the snow, we found ourselves in a couple of inches of soft green vegetable mud, like a _compote_ of dark-coloured duckweed--or, to use a more familiar simile, like a ma.s.s of overboiled and ill-strained spinach. To the grief of one of us, there was ice under this, of most persuasive slipperiness. The maire said that he had never seen these signs of thaw in his visits in previous years; and as we went farther and farther into the cave, he was more and more surprised at each step to find such a large quant.i.ty of running water, and so much less ice than he had expected. The shape of the glaciere is a rough circle, 60 feet in diameter; and the floor, which is solid ice, slopes gradually down to the farther end. The immediate entrance is half-closed by a steep and very regular cone of snow, lying vertically under the small shaft we had seen in the rock above. The snow which forms the cone descends in winter by this shaft; and the formation must have been going on for a considerable time, since the lower part of the cone has become solid ice, under the combined influences of pressure and of _degel_ and _regel_. I climbed up the side of this, by cutting steps in the lower part, and digging feet and hands deep into the snow higher up; and I found the length of the side to be 30 feet. I had no means of determining the height of the cave, and a guess might not be of much value.

At first sight, the farther end of the cave was the most striking. The water which comes from the melting snow down which we had pa.s.sed in reaching the glaciere, had cut itself deep channels in the floor, and through these it coursed rapidly till it precipitated itself into a large pit or _moulin_ in the ice, at the lowest point. This pit, a will be seen by the section of the cave given on p. 174,[71] terminates the glaciere; and the rock-wall at the farther edge falls away into a sort of open fissure, down which magnificent cascades of ice stream emulously, clothing that side of the pit, which would otherwise be solid rock. We cut a few steps about the upper edge of this _moulin_, to make all safe, and proceeded to let down a lighted candle, which descended safely for 36 feet, showing nothing but ice on all sides; it then came in contact with one of the falls of water, and the light was of course extinguished. We next tied a stone to the string, and found that after 40 feet it struck on ice and turned inwards, under our feet, stopping finally at the end of 51 feet; but whether it was really the bottom of the pit that stopped it, or only some ledge or accidental impediment, we could not determine. The diameter of this pit might be 3 yards, but we took no measure of it.

At the extreme right of the cave we found another pit, a yard and a half across, two-thirds of the circ.u.mference of which was formed by the plateau of ice on which we stood, and the remaining third by a fluting in the wall of rock. The maire said that, two years ago, this hole was not visible, being concealed by a large ice-column which had since fallen in. Here again I let down a lighted candle, with more hopes of getting it to the bottom, as no part of the cave drained into the pit. The candle descended steadily, the flame showing no signs of atmospheric disturbance, and revealing the fact that the opposite side of the pit, viz. the rock, which alone was visible from our position, became more and more thickly covered with ice, of exquisite clearness, and varied and most graceful forms. As foot after foot, and yard after yard, ran out, and our heads craned farther and farther over the edge of the pit to follow the descending light, (we lay flat on the ice, for more safety,) the cries of the schoolmaster became mere howls, and the maire lapsed into oaths heavy enough to break in the ice. It is always sufficiently disagreeable to hear men swear; but in situations which have anything impressive, either of danger or of grandeur, it becomes more than ever unbearable. I remember on one occasion over-taking a large party in the descent from the Plateau to the Grands Mulets, in a place where the snow was extremely soft, and any moment might land one of us in a creva.s.se; and I shall never forget the oaths which caught my ear, from a floundering fellow-countryman enveloped from the waist downwards.

When 60 feet had run out, the candle stopped, and on stretching over I saw that it had reached a slope of ice which inclined very steeply northwards, and pa.s.sed away under the rock, apparently into a fresh cavern. By raising the candle slightly and then letting it drop, we made it glide down this slope for 8 feet; and then it finally rested on a shelf of ice, showing us the shadowy beginnings of what should be a most glorious ice-cave. The little light which the candle gave was made the most of by the reflecting material which surrounded it; and we were able to see that the archway in the rock was rounded off with grey ice, and rested, as it were, on icy pillars. As far as we could judge, there would have been abundant room to pa.s.s down the slope under the archway, if only the preliminary 60 feet could by any means have been accomplished; and I shall dream for long of what there must be down there.

As I was anxious to know whether the side of the pit was vertical ice under our feet, I contrived to get about a third of the way round the edge, so as almost to reach the fluting in the rock which formed the farther side of the pit, and then desired the schoolmaster to raise the candle slowly from the ledge on which it still rested. As he pulled it gradually up, I was startled to find that the ice fell away sharply immediately below the spot where we had been collected, and then formed a solid wall; so that we had been standing on the mere edge of a shelf, with nothing but black emptiness below. How far the solid wall receded at the bottom I was unable to determine, for the light of one candle was of very little use at so great a distance, and in darkness so profound.

I persuaded the maire to make an effort to reach a point from which he could see the insecurity of the ice which had seemed to form so solid a floor; and he was so much impressed by what he saw, that he fled with precipitation from the cave, and we eventually found him asleep under a bush on the rocks above. In reaching the farther side of the pit, we crossed unwittingly an ice-bridge formed by a transverse pit or tunnel in the ice, which opened into the pit we were examining. The maire afterwards promised to rail off all that end of the glaciere, and forbid his workmen to venture upon it. Considering that the hole itself was only opened two years before by the fall of a column, and has already undergone such changes, I shall be surprised if the ice-bridge, and all that part on which we lay to fathom the pit, does not fall in before very long; and then, by means of steps and ropes and ladders, it may be possible to reach the entrance to the lower cave, 190 feet below the surface of the earth. May I be there to see![72]

The left side of the glaciere, near the entrance, was occupied by a columnar cascade, behind which I forced a pa.s.sage by chopping away some lovely ornaments of ice. Here also the solid ground-ice falls away a little under the surface, leaving a cavern 8 or 9 feet deep, on the rock side of which every possible glacial fantasy was to be found. The stalact.i.tes here presented the peculiar prismatic structure so often noticed; but on the more exposed side of the column they were tipped with limpid ice, free from all apparent external or internal lines. This reminded me of what we had observed in the Glaciere of La Genolliere, namely, that the surface-lines tended to disappear under thaw; so I cut a piece of prismatic ice and put it in my mouth. In a short time it became perfectly limpid, and on breaking it up I could discover no signs of prism. On some parts of the floor of the glaciere, the ice was apparently unprismatic, generally in connection with running water or other marks of thaw; but, to my surprise, I found that it split into prisms very readily.

The maire could not understand how it was that, after a winter especially severe, as that of 1863-4 had been, there should be even less ice than in the preceding summer, and we could see the marks of last year's cutting, down to the edge of the _moulin_. He said that they had never before cut down in that direction; but in the summer of 1863 they had been so much struck by the clearness of the ice which formed the floor, that they had cut it freely, and removed a large quant.i.ty. This, I believe, was the cause of the absence of any great amount of fresh ice. The slope of the whole ice-floor is considerable, and the workmen increased the slope by cutting away the ice in the neighbourhood of the edge of the _moulin_: they had also, as we could see quite plainly, excavated the clearer parts of the ice between the entrance to the cave and the _moulin_, so that a sort of trough ran down from near the foot of the snow to the pit at the lower end of the glaciere. When we were there, the water rushed down this trough, and was lost in the pit; and very probably the same may have been the case in the earlier parts of the year, when, according to the view I have already expressed, the ice would under ordinary circ.u.mstances have been formed. If this be so, the caverns below must have received immense additions to their stores of ice or water. We observed, by the way, that the slope of ice to which the candle descended in the deeper pit, and the shelf on which it rested, were quite dry, or at any rate free from all apparent signs of the abundant water we should have seen, had that been the outlet for the streams which poured into the _moulin_. The maire said that the columns and cascades of ice in the cave had been much more beautiful in the previous summer.

The whole cavern would thus appear to be something of the shape of an egg, with the longer axis vertical, and the entrance about half-way up the side. The lower end of this egg-shaped cavity in the rock is filled with ice, which in some parts shrinks from the rock below the surface, though, as far as outward appearance goes, it fills the cavern to its farthest corners. The depth of this ice at one side is 60 feet, and how much more it may be in the middle it is impossible to say. As we have seen, there is a second ice-cave opening out of the princ.i.p.al one, at a depth of 190 feet below the surface; and with respect to this second cave imagination may run riot. Rosset told me that he had noticed, the year before, a strong source of water springing out of the side of a rock, at some little distance from the glaciere; but he could not reach it then, and could not find it now. This may possibly be the drainage of the glaciere in its summer state.

The thermometer stood at 34 in the middle of the cave; and though the others felt the cold very much, I was myself surprised to find so low a register, for the atmosphere seemed to be comparatively warm, judging from what I had experienced in other glacieres. The only current of air we could detect was exceedingly slight, and came from the deeper of the two pits in the ice. It was so slight, that the flame of the candle burned apparently quite steadily when we were engaged in determining the depth and shape of the pit.

The sun had by this time produced such an effect upon the slope of snow outside the glaciere, that we found the ascent sufficiently difficult, especially as our hands were full of various instruments. The schoolmaster was not content to choose the straight line up, and in attempting to perform a zigzag, he came to a part of the slope where the snow lay about 2 inches thick on solid ice, and the result was an unscholastic descent in inverted order of precedence. He got on better over the rolling stones after the snow was accomplished, but the clumsy style of his climbing dislodged an unpleasant amount and weight of missiles; and though he was amiable enough to cry '_Garde_!' with every step he took, it will be found by experiment that it is not much use to the lower man to have '_Garde_!' shouted in his ears, when his footing is insecure to begin with, and a large stone comes full at his head, at the precise moment when two others are taking him in the pit of the stomach.

We found the maire, as was said, asleep under a bush near the mouth of the pit; and he p.r.o.nounced himself completely recovered from the effects of the cold, and ready to guide us to a second glaciere. He told us that the amount of ice he sold averaged 4,000 _quintaux metriques_ a week, for the three months of July, August, and September; but the last winter had been so severe, that the lake had provided ice for the artificial glacieres of Annecy, and no one had as yet applied to him this year. As only a fortnight of his usual season had pa.s.sed, he may have since had plenty of applications, later in the year. The railways have opened up more convenient sources of ice for Lyons, and for some time he has sent none to that town.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 66: A Yorks.h.i.+re farmer unconsciously adapts the German _Wolkenbruch_, declaring on occasion that the rain is so heavy, it is 'ommust as if a clood had brussen someweers.']

[Footnote 67: I tried the hay in this chalet one night, with such results that the next time I slept there, two years after, I preferred a combination of planks.]

[Footnote 68: _i.e._ New milk, warm.]

[Footnote 69: Otherwise graphically called _battu_.]

[Footnote 70: I had no means of determining the elevation of the ground.

The fact of 12 feet of snow is of no value as a guide to the height.

Last winter (1864-5) there was 26 feet of snow on the Jura, at a height of less than 4,000 feet, and the position of some of the larger chalets was only marked by a slight boss on the plane surface.]

[Footnote 71: In the section of the cave, I have brought out the deeper pit from the side into the middle, so as to show both in one section: I have also slightly shaded the pits, instead of leaving them blank like shafts in the rock.]

[Footnote 72: I have made arrangements for completing the exploration of this cave, and the one which is next described, in the course of the present summer.]