A FREQUENT ACCIDENT.
It is now a well established fact that these immense glaciers, between ten and twenty miles long, and from one to three miles wide, and oftentimes five hundred feet thick, are continually moving, though of course very slowly, averaging from one hundred to as high as five hundred feet per annum. The Mer de Glace, near Chamonix, which is twelve miles long and nearly a mile wide, is said to have moved a foot a day during the past year.
This glacier, the Mer de Glace, is one of the most beautiful of the four hundred that are to be found in the Alps near Mt. Blanc. De Saussure, the Genevese naturalist, speaking of its surface, said that it “resembles a sea suddenly frozen, not during a tempest, but when the wind has subsided, and the waves, although still high, have become blunted and rounded. These great waves are intersected by transverse crevasses, the interior of which appears blue, while the ice is white on the surface.”
The journey from Chamonix to Montavert, where the best view on the “Sea of Ice” can be had, is very tiresome, and not unattended with danger, but the sight is well worth the time and trouble. Twelve miles of solid ice in the most fantastic shapes, “a sea suddenly frozen,” is a sight never to be forgotten.
