August 26.—At 5 A.M. was off with Clemente Forni. It was as fresh and bright as could be wished for one’s last morning among the mountains. The way was over short rock-strewn turf, by the side of the infant Ticino, with near mountains right and left and before me. Clemente was of the kind of men you take to at once, and who give you afterwards no reason—I will suppose this of him—for changing your opinion. Everything around, and within, promised well for a pleasant day on the Gries glacier, which both last year, and the year before, I had looked at over the head of the Valais, from the top of the Grimsel, with a desire for a nearer acquaintance. From what I had seen of Clemente yesterday he seemed industrious, thoughtful, gentle, honest, one who had a head, a heart, and a conscience. Indeed, the stream of his discursive talk, fed from these fountains, never ran dry. This made him a man whom it was pleasant to walk and to talk with. His only scheming was how he might by his own hard labour bring up his six little folk, and as many more as might come. In about an hour and a half we reached the cheese châlet of the Cruina alpe, in a little mountain-locked bay, well sheltered from every wind. The sixty-four cows kept upon it had all been milked, and with but a few exceptions here and there, were all again lying down, knowing that they should not be taken for the day to pasture, till the four herdsmen had made the cheese, and had their own breakfast.
We entered the châlet. The milk of the sixty-four cows was being curded in a gigantic copper caldron, over a clear smokeless cembra fire. A man of about six-and-thirty, not tall, but broad and bony, of iron frame and massive muscles, was in charge of the caldron. At another fire was another of the party, preparing a pot of polenta made with cream. The other two were lying on thick gray blankets at the further end of the single room. The polenta was soon ready, and was carried, in the pot in which it had been made, outside the châlet—there was no room for the party within—and six one-legged stools set round it for the four herdsmen, my guide, and myself, and a round-bowled spoon brought out for each of us. We ranged ourselves on the one-legged stools around the pot. One who hails from the south of the Tweed will probably prefer polenta made with cream to oatmeal porridge. When they had finished the polenta, each dipped with a miniature wooden keeler, which does duty for dish, plate, and basin, out of a large wooden tub as much muscarp as he would require for supplementing his first course of polenta. A great deal of muscarp is made from sixty-four cows, and it is the work of one of the herdsmen to take this down daily to All’ Acqua, from whence it is sent on upon another back to Bedretto. The man who takes it down to All’ Acqua returns with a load of wood. On leaving the party I had some difficulty in persuading the broad-shouldered, brawny-muscled cheese-maker to accept a franc for his hospitality.
As we passed through the herd one of the cows that was on her legs came up to us, and rubbed her head against my guide. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is my cow.’ While she was thus expressing, in her dumb fashion, her satisfaction at seeing him—there was no hypocrisy in this recognition—two dun yearling heifers rose from the ground, and coming up to him, as the cow had done, began to lick his hand. These also, I needed not to have been told it, were his. Here was irrefragable evidence of the gentleness of the good man. What a pleasant sight to the cow was the familiar form and dress! How often had those yearling heifers eaten from that hand! They had never been cuffed, or kicked, or sworn at. The wife and children, too, then, had had, and would continue to have, done for them all that man could do at All’ Acqua; and so would all who might come in the good man’s way. Who could help liking and respecting one, for whom his beasts were showing such confiding regard, or could fail to be reminded of very different scenes he had witnessed elsewhere? When a horse shrinks from the man who has charge of it, you need not be told in words how he is in the habit of treating it. No further evidence is needed. On this occasion I, too, came in for some share of attention, for a goat that was kept with the herd ran up to me, and, rubbing her nose on my hand, begged for a pinch of salt. How gladly would I have complied with her request! Were I ever again to visit the alpe of Cruina I would not go without a pinch or two of salt.
We were now near the head of the Pass. The grass was beginning to thin out. The marmots were abroad for their morning feed. As we disturbed them, they wriggled home with a slow and awkward movement, for their bodies are long and their legs short; and when they had reached the door of their runs, so that they could feel somewhat secure, paused for a moment or two to make out the designs of the intruders. Just before us was the Corno glacier to which we were approaching, and on to which a few more steps would take us. We had ascended about 3,000 feet from All’ Acqua, and were now at an elevation of 8,000 feet. ‘The little sinuous paths of earthly care’ were far below, and around us were some of ‘the flowers that embellish’ the pedestrian’s way, and ‘the springs that refresh’ him at these heights. One of the former was a pale sky-blue gentian, a flower that still embellishes memory, as it did on that day my path, and from one of the latter I had a rare draught, at the spot where it welled out of the rock a little below the glacier. And now we are upon the Corno glacier, itself. It has some peculiarities. First it is in the form of a saddle, or the segment of a circle, with the glacier for the arc of the segment, the chord being underground. In a word it is convex. This double inclination is one peculiarity. Another is found in its moraine. As it has no lateral glaciers to cause medial moraines, you would suppose that it would have two lateral moraines, and nothing more. It has, however, nothing of the kind on either side, but, instead, one large, well compacted, wall-like moraine some considerable way from the margin. And now we are struck with another peculiarity. The glacier on the Gries side is depressed along the middle in the axis of its length. As, then, the moraine is not on the margin, we should have expected to find it following the line of greatest central depression, whereas it runs along the face of one of the inclines midway between the margin and the line of greatest depression. These, then, are the questions the sight suggests to us; Why are there not two moraines, one on each margin of the glacier? How comes it that the single moraine, which must have been formed from the mountains above, seeing that it is not on one of the margins, is not in the line of the central depression? How comes it to be so compactly and cleanly built along the middle of the descent of one side towards the central depression? And what has produced this central depression? Clemente from his knowledge of the locality was able to answer all these questions, I think, satisfactorily. In winter the glacier is buried in snow to a great depth. At that season, and in the spring, the snow-inclines from the two mountains meet not above the line of longitudinal greatest depression in summer, but exactly along the line of the moraine. Here in winter and spring is the line of greatest depression. Every rock, therefore, that falls from either mountain rolls down to this line, and is added to the moraine. As a general rule rocks only fall in winter and spring. This accounts for their being nowhere except along this line, that is to say for the strange position of the moraine along the flank of an incline of ice. In the early spring, when the snow is beginning to melt, and for some time longer, the moraine continues to be the line of greatest depression. At this time, therefore, all the surface melting flows along it through its open pile of stones: this accounts for their being washed clean and kept open. As the summer advances, and the sun becomes more vertical, the snow is melted away to some distance below the moraine, and the line of greatest depression is advanced considerably, along which, as long as there is any surface snow melting, there is a stream flowing, which, as long as it lasts, aids in deepening the central depression. This accounts for the summer line of depression along the middle of the glacier, far below the moraine. This glacier, then, as we said at first, is, when regarded as a whole, of a convex form; but a transverse section of it on the Gries side, and taken at a point alongside of the moraine would be concave. Its position explains its convexity. It descends on the summit of a gentle ridge, or if you prefer so to state it, is formed on the summit of a gentle ridge; it naturally, therefore, flows down each side of this ridge. I have given Clemente’s explanation of the singular position of the moraine, and of the central concavity of the western limb of the glacier.
Having left the Corno we got upon the Gries by passing along the flank of the last spur of the mountain to the north of the Corno glacier. At its extremity, with the Corno on your left, you command a grand view of the broad expanse of the Gries. To this we now descended. It here presents a smooth surface, rising to the south-west. We passed the line of poles, each fixed in a counterpoise of rock to keep it erect, which mark the horse track across the glacier from the Upper Valais to Domo d’Ossola. We spent about an hour upon it, walking up it, in the direction of the lofty, massive, smooth-faced, umber-coloured mountain, which protrudes through it to the west of the track to Domo d’Ossola. We then recovered the path to Ulrichen.
One goes on a glacier, or goes to see anything, for the sake of the thoughts the sight will awaken. This is as much the case with the man who is unconscious, as with the man who is conscious, of thinking; as much with the clod as with the philosopher; with the man who sneers at thought, that is to say all thought but his own, as with the man who knows that thought is his life, and himself. Now one of the thoughts that interest the mind as you stand on this mighty mass of ice, and know that, as you stand upon it, you and it are being invisibly, imperceptibly, and regularly moved on together, is what moves it? That the movement of the Gries is for local reasons unusually slow, even for a glacier, heightens the interest of the question submitted to your thought. I had at that time a wound on one of my finger-nails, which had been caused by the bite of a dog two months back. It had originally been at the root of the nail. But now it had in the course of those two months advanced almost to the outer edge of the nail, that is to say it had with the utmost slowness, but also with the utmost regularity, travelled from the inner to the outer edge, a journey of an inch in two months. Now what had caused it to move in this way? It was evident that the whole nail, which appears to be firmly fixed to the finger, had moved on with it. Day and night the movement had been going on; but what was it that had been making it move? I suppose the pressure from behind caused by the growth of new matter. This growth of new matter at the root of the nail had caused continuous pressure from behind. This continuous pressure had been propagated throughout the whole extent of the nail, and so had obliged it to move on. Is not the growth of the upper snow-field, and the consequent pressure from it, exactly analogous? Is it not equally continuous? And is it not similarly propagated throughout the whole glacier? And, too, with the same result, that is to say is it not this pressure which obliges the whole mass to move on in the line of least resistance? The wounded point in the nail marked the rate of advance, just as a rock on the surface of the glacier might.
We may see an instance of what continuous pressure will do in the case of a tree growing near an iron fence. They at last come in contact, and the pressure being from the direction of the tree bends the iron. The comparatively soft bark is not cut into: it is the iron that gives way. If the pressure had been in the reverse direction, that is from the iron, the tree would have been cut into. So with the root of a tree in an old wall. The pressure being continuous from the root cracks the wall, though the root is soft and the wall hard. Some ilexes, which a few years back I saw growing on the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine, supplied good instances of the effect of this continuous action of soft on hard substances. Their roots had rent and lifted large masses of what had previously been solid blocks of the firmest masonry, that had stood uninjured through so long a series of centuries, and, had it not been for these roots, would still have been solid and unmoved. So also with the expansion of water when freezing in the cranny of a rock, the expansion of the soft material burst the hard one. The propagation then of continuous pressure throughout the mass of the Gries glacier, although it is four miles long, and one mile broad, and no one can say how thick, may possibly be sufficient to account for its being moved on in the line of least resistance. And if the principle be correct may it not be applied to glaciers of twenty times the magnitude of the Gries? that is to say to all glaciers? In the instances referred to, the formation of new matter at the root of the nail, and of new wood upon the trunk and on the root of a tree, the pressure comes from what is soft, and is applied effectually to what is hard: so may it be with the action of the snow-field on the glacier.
We left the Gries by the same mountain by which we had reached it, with the difference that we now, instead of traversing its southern, had to descend its northern side. First, however, we had to ascend for a few hundred yards. When you have reached the highest point of the path, you look upon a large expanse of the Bernese Oberland. You may find among the Alps many views that are more extensive, and many that in some one feature, or other, are more striking than this. What, however, is before you from this point is in a very high degree impressive. It is a wondrous scene of Alpine architecture, simple in its elements, but grand in its simplicity. To your left is one of the exits of the Gries. The branch glacier in it terminates abruptly, not after a gentle declivity, such as that of the body of the glacier, but in the mid descent of a precipitous outfall. The previously smooth surface is here ruptured with many deep, yawning, transverse seams. Beyond the glacier—to you its further boundary—is a mountain so steep that you may suppose, and perhaps rightly, that no human foot could ascend it. This glacier gorge at your side is a lateral of the transverse valley below you, a valley of enormous depth, scantily clad with humble Alpine pasturage. You can just make out the herd that is grazing in it. On looking over the long steep-sided mountain which forms its opposite range, at the foot of which the cows are grazing, the south-eastern region of the Bernese Oberland is spread out before you. It is at that distance at which the field of vision may comprise many objects, but every object is still seen distinctly. In this wide, verdureless field, there is no suggestion of life. The midday sun, which is shining brightly upon it, brings out nothing but the gray of the summits of rock, which, when not in the shade, show of a pale ash colour, and the white of the summits of snow, which gleams and dazzles in its purity. This dark gray, pale ash, and gleamy white are the only colouring. The gray and pale ash predominate in an endless variety of forms—mountain walls, ridges, battlements, bastions, and escarpments. Every here and there above these is a dome, or a tower, or a pinnacle of gleaming white, just as the domes, and towers, and pinnacles of a great city rise above its other buildings. This is a city of the world’s Builder in which every building is an Alp.
You continue your descent, and soon lose this grand view. But the mountain side, down which your way lies, is grander than usual, longer, and steeper. Your path takes you by intrusive dykes of gneiss and of a black basaltic-looking rock. We here overtook two professors, a botanist with his cases, and an entomologist with his net. They had been beaten by the ascent, and were retracing their steps, fagged, crestfallen, and disappointed. They had our sympathy for their pursuits, and our condolence for their disappointment. Poor fellows! they had just made the painful discovery—may it not have been made too late—that in their mode of life there had been too much desk work, and not enough field work. When human physiology shall be better understood these sad mistakes will not be so frequent. You have now got down into the valley. You look up at the mountain you have been descending. Its height, its steepness, its mass, its ruggedness, its hardness, its inexorableness are so overpowering that your eye shrinks from the effort to aid you in constructing an image of it. At the foot of that high, overhanging, cloud-cleaving upheaval of adamant, you feel very small, very feeble; to your present apprehension your bones are no more than straws, if so much. For a time you allow these impressions of the locality to run their course. Your way is then along the deep valley. As you advance down it you give more heed than usual to the hurrying dashing stream, and you note with more observance than usual the reappearance of the first trees, and of the first châlets, and even the form and size of the detached rocks, for the thought is in your mind that these sounds and sights are being presented to you, for this year at all events, now for the last time. And so about midday you reach the little flat of Ulrichen, and your Month is ended. Your walk will have taken you over between 300 and 400 miles, comprising more than a dozen Passes of one kind or another; and you will have seen much of nature and of man to awaken thought, and to interest you. Every day will have been worth living, and not least so the last. But whatever your capacity for being benefited, or interested, by what you may have seen, you will be but slightly, if at all, indebted for it to that eight-parts-of-speech lore, the study of which, though it formed the chief occupation of all the days of our blessed youth, did not issue in enabling all of us to know so much, or so little, as the names of those eight parts of speech.