Tin Croft Mine, Cornwall. (J. Prestwich, Collected papers, etc., page 206, quotes Mr. Moyle.)—Ice has been found in abundance in this mine at a depth of nearly 100 meters.
CENTRAL EUROPE.
Glacière de Chaux-les-Passavant. Described in Part I., [page 8]. (Poissenot, Nouvelles Histoires Tragiques de Benigne Poissenot, licencié aux lois. A Paris, chez Guillaume Bichon, rue S. Jacques, a l’enseigne du Bichot, 1586, avec privilege du Roy, pages 436-453. Gollut, Les Mémoires historiques de la Repub. Sequanoise, et des princes de la Franche Comté de Bourgogne, par M. Lois Gollut, Advocat au Parlement de Dôle; A Dôle, 1592. Trouillet, Mémoires de la Société d’Émulation du Doubs, 1885. Girardot, Mémoires de la Société d’Émulation du Doubs, 1886.)
The earliest notice of a glacière which I have been able to find is in the shape of a letter giving an account of a visit to the Glacière de Chaux-les-Passavant in 1584, by Benigne Poissenot, a French lawyer. The account, which I have translated as literally as possible, is in a special chapter, as follows:—
"Sir:—Since our separation, I have had this pleasure (heut) to hear news of you only once, having found your brother in Paris; who, having assured me of your good health (disposition), informed me of how since we had seen each other you had travelled to Italy, even as far as Greece, of which you had seen a large portion: and that sound and safe, after so long a journey, you had reappeared and landed at Havre de Grace where you wished to go, that is to say at home. All the pleasure which a friend can receive, knowing the affairs of another self, joined to such a happy result, seized my heart, at the recital of such agreeable news: and I did not fail shortly after, to write you amply all which had happened to me since I left you until my return to France: congratulating you at having escaped from marine abysses and perilous passages on land, on which travellers are often constrained to risk their life. From this time, I have always stayed in Paris or in the neighborhood, according to the good pleasure of dame fortune, who ruled me in her wise and fed me with her dishes the most common and ordinary until the first day of January of the year 1584, when I received my first gift in the shape of a strong and violent disease, which tormented me more than a month: from which, having become cured with the help of God, and having with time recovered my health and my strength at the arrival of spring, I was seized with the desire to smell the air of the country. And in fact having thrown away my pen and travelled about (battu l’estrade) through high and low Burgundy, I stopped at Bezenson, Imperial City, to spend the summer. This city is still to day just the same as Julius Cæsar describes it, in the notable mention he makes of it, in the first book of his commentaries of the war in Gaul, there remaining there all the vestiges of the most remarkable things, which he tells of in his description. There are also very fine fountains, from all of which water streams from the representation of some god of antiquity, as a Neptune, a Bacchus, a Pan, a Nereide or others: except before the state house, where the statue of Charles the Fifth, representing him in a most natural manner, is placed on an eagle, which from its beak, pours out such a great quantity of water that this is the most beautiful, among all the other fountains. And as I do not doubt that while traversing Italy, you both saw and examined with curiosity the most handsome singularities, which presented themselves to your eyes and that on your return, passing through Avignon and Dauphiné, as your brother informed me, you had the advantage over me of seeing the wonders of the country, of which you had heard me speak sometimes, regretting that the war, during the time I was in that quarter, had prevented my going to the spot, to see the burning fountain as in Dodone, and the fountain called Jupiter, which torches of fire light up and which grows less till midday and then grows till midnight, and then diminishes and fails at midday: and another in Epirus which we call to day Albania, the tower without venom and the inaccessible mountain: then as I said, since you have contemplated these things and several others not less admirable, I wish to entertain you about a marvel which I saw, during my sojourn in Bezenson, to know from you, whether in all your journey, you saw a similar thing. Know then that the day of the festival of St. John Baptist, a young man, provided with an honest knowledge, with whom I had made some little acquaintance, presented me with an icicle, to cool my wine at dinner, and which I admired greatly, on account of the time of the year in which we then were, begging him who gave it to me to tell me where he had discovered this rare present for that time. He answered me that every year, the day of the solemnity of the festival of St. John Baptist, the inhabitants of a village, which he named, were bound to come to offer the great church of St. John of Bezenson, a goodly quantity of ice, which they got in a wood, and brought to town at night on horses, for fear that by day it should melt, and that one of his cronies had given to him what he had given to me.
“Suddenly there flamed up in me a desire to see this place, where in the height of the summer, ice was to be found. When he who had presented me with the icicle saw this, he promised to accompany me, not having as yet, any more than myself, seen this marvel. I did not hatch very long this decision, all the more as all those, to whom I mentioned it, encouraged me to carry it out as soon as I could, assuring me that I should see a strange thing, and that even the Duke of Alva on his return from Flanders, passing through Franche Comté, had wished to see this novelty. Therefore calling on the promise of the one who was the cause of undertaking this journey, we went together to Versey, a fine town, distant five leagues from Bezenson, turning a little off our direct route, to go to see a literary man, at this said Versey, who having called on me at Bezenson, had extracted from me the promise of going to see him. There happened to me in this spot, what the poet du Bellay says happened to him, on his return from Italy, passing through the Grisons, to go into France: who, after having chanted the troubles there are in the passage, says that the Swiss made him drink so much, that he does not remember anything he saw in that country. Likewise, I can assure you that my host, following the custom of those of the country (who do not think they are treating a man properly if they do not make him drink a lot, taking that from the Germans, their neighbors) made us carouse so well, that when we went to bed, we were very gay boys. For although we had both made an agreement on the road, yet our host knew so well how to win us over, saying that those who would not drink, gave reason to think badly of them, and that they had committed, or wished to commit some great crime, which they feared to give away in drinking, that in the end we let ourselves go, passing the time in Pantagruelic fashion. The next morning having taken some “hair from the beast” and a guide which our host gave to us to conduct us to the Froidiere—we continued our wanderings, and arrived at a little village called Chaud, joining a large wood, where our guide told us, that although he had been more than six times to the Froidiere, yet the road was so tortuous and so cut up by small paths, that if we did not take a man from this village, to be more sure, we might spend more than half a day in the wood, before finding what we were seeking. Getting off our horses now, we added to our company a native of the place, who having led us by crooked roads, about a quarter of a league, through the forest, made us enter into a close thicket and by a little path led us to a pleasant meadow; where, looking down, we saw a hole, of difficult descent, at the bottom of which was the opening of a grotto, pretty big, and so awful and terrifying to see, that one would have said, it was the mouth of Hell. And in truth, I remembered then, the hole of St. Patrick, which is said to be in Hibernia. We were not brave enough knights, to try the adventure, my companion and I, if our guides had not taken the lead. After whom we descended as magnanimously as the Trojan Duke followed the Sybil to the Plutonic realms, the sword half drawn from the scabbard, and well determined to make test of the Platonic doctrine, which teaches that demons can be dissected, in case any shade or spook should have come to meet us. About the middle of the way, we began to feel in descending a very agreeable freshness; for it was the second day of July and the sun shone very warmly, which made us sweat drop by drop. But we had good opportunity to refresh ourselves and put ourselves to cool, having reached the grotto which we found of the length and breadth of a large hall, all paved with ice in the bottom, and where a crystalline water, colder than that of the mountains of Arcadia Nonacris, streamed from many small brooklets, which formed very clear fountains, with the water of which I washed myself and drank so eagerly, that I had wished the thirst of Tantalus, or else that I had been bitten by a Dipsas, in order to be always thirsty, amid such a pleasant beverage. A great lord, who in some pleasure resort, should have such a refrigerator in summer, could boast according to my judgment, to be better provided with drink, than the kings of Persia were with their river Coaspis, which engulphs itself into the Tigris, the water whereof was so sweet, that the use of it was allowed only to the great King, for the retinue and cronies of his household. Do not think, that among these delights, I was at all free from fear, for never did I raise my eyes above that from terror my whole body shivered and the hair stood up on my head, seeing the whole roof of the grotto, covered with big massive icicles, the least of which, falling on me, had been sufficient to scramble up my brains and knock me to pieces; so much so that I was like to that criminal, whom they say is punished in Hell, by the continual fear of a big stone, which seems as though it must suddenly fall on his ears. There are besides the large hall of the grotto, some rather roomy corners, where the gentlemen of the neighborhood, put their venison to cool in summer, and we saw the hooks, where they hang the wild fowl. It is true, that when we were there, we saw neither game nor wild fowl, and I think, that if we had found any of it, we were men to carry off some of it. We walked around for about a quarter of an hour, in this Froidiere and we should have staid there longer if the cold had not driven us out; which struck in to our backs, even to make our teeth crack; we reascended the slope, not forgetting, all of us as many as we were, to provide and load ourselves with ice, which served us at lunch in the little village mentioned above to drink most delightfully, assuring you that it is impossible to drink more freshly than we drank then. I thought of those old voluptuaries, who cooled their wine with snow, and it seemed to me, as though they might have had it much cheaper if in their time there had been many such Froidieres, to refresh it with ice, instead of with snow, as some of the gentlemen of the neighborhood of the Froidiere and some of the most notable persons of the neighborhood of Bezenson do; who by night, have a good supply brought on horses, which they keep in their caves, and use at their meals and banquets. Turning back towards the Imperial city of Bezenson, I carried for about two great leagues, a rather large icicle in my hands, which little by little melted and was a pleasant and agreeable cooler, on account of the great heat of the weather. After having thought over in my mind, the cause of this antiperistase, I could find none other but this: to wit, that as heat domineers in summer, the cold retires to places low and subterranean, such as is this one, to which the rays of the sun cannot approach, and that in such an aquatic and humid place, it operates the results, which we have shown above. Which seemed to me so much more likely, that on asking the peasants of the neighboring village, if in winter there was ice in this Froidiere, they answered me that there was none, and that on the contrary, it was very warm there. Whatever may be the cause, whether this or another, I can assure you, that I admired this singularity as much as any I have seen, since a large church, cut into a rock which I had seen a few years previously, in a little town of Gascony called St. Milion, distant seven leagues from Bordeaux; on the steeple of which is the cemetery, where they bury the dead; a thing to be marvelled at by him who has not seen it.
“I have made trial, to enrich this missive, with all the artifice which has come into my head, using the leisure, which the present time brings me: as the temple of Janus is open, the air beyond breathing nothing but war: which forces me, against my wish, to sojourn in this place longer than I had intended. If these troubles settle down, and if after the rain, God sends us fine weather as requires the calamitous state in which is now the flat country, I shall return to my Parnassus; from which if I go out hereafter, believe that it will be very much in spite of myself, or that my will will have very much changed. You will be able to let me hear from you there, and take your revenge for the prolixity of this letter, by sending me one still longer, which you will write to me with more pleasure, as I shall take much in reading it. However as it is becoming time to sound taps, I will pray the sovereign creator for my affectionate recommendations to your graces.
“Sir, and best friend, may you keep in health and have a long and happy life. From Sens this 20th of June 1585.
“Your obedient friend, BENIGNE POISSENOT.