In spite of the apparent proximity of the glacier, it still took us several minutes’ climb before we reached its foot.
Truth to tell, the bad fare exhibited by Margareta Larsdatter Ovrehus, was bad travelling on, and made me rather exact in distances to-day. Passing through a birch-grove, full of blue-berries and cloud-berries of delicious taste, we found the glacier only about thirty yards in front of us. The shingly space which intervened was traversed by four or five breastworks of loose sand and stones, about ten feet in height. These are the moraines left by the retreating glacier, so that at one time the ice and the birch-copse must have touched. Indeed, on either side of the glacier the trees may be seen holding their ground close by the ice, loth, apparently, to be separated from their opposite brethren by the intervention of such an unceremonious intruder.
We scrambled over the loose ramparts, and going close under the glacier where a muddy stream came forth, we discovered a huge cave, cut out of a blue wall of ice, some sixty feet in height. Some of the superincumbent mass had evidently just fallen in, causing, perhaps, the roar which we had heard as we ascended the valley. It was rather dangerous work entering the cavern, as another fall might take place, and I had no ambition to be preserved after the manner of the Irish salmon for the London market. But it was not every day that one is privileged to enter such a magnificent hall, so in I went alone. It was lit, too, by a lantern in the roof, in other words, by a perfectly circular hole, drilled through the crown of the arch, through which I saw the sky overhead. Nothing could exceed the intense depth of blue in this cool recess.
But let us come and look a little more at the stupendous scene above. Far up skyward, at a distance of perhaps six English miles, though it looks about one, is the pure cold level snow of the Folgefond, glistening between two mighty horns of shivered rock, that soar still higher heavenward.
These two portals contract the passage through which pours the great ice ocean; so that the monstrous billows are upheaved on the backs of one another in their struggle onward, and tower up into various forms.
“By Jove,” said one of my companions, “it looks just like a city on a hill side, Lyons, for instance. Look yonder, there are regular church towers and domes, and pinnacles and spires, and castellated buildings, only somehow etherialized. Why, there’s the arch of a bridge, you can see right under it at the buildings beyond.”
“If Macaulay’s New Zealander were there,” remarked I, “he would behold a grander sight than ever he will on London Bridge when the metropolis of the world is in ruin.”
“Ruin!” rejoined the poetical son of Erin, “that’s already at work here. Look at this hall of ice which has come down to-day. Ah! it’s quite melancholy to think how all this splendid vision, these cloud-capped towers, these glorious palaces of silver and aquamarine, are moving on insensibly, day by day, to their destruction, and will melt away, not into air, but into dirty water, by the time they reach the spot where we’re standing.”
We had some hours of boating before night-fall, so that we were forced to tear ourselves from the scene, not forgetting to have a good look first at a feature in it not yet mentioned—a magnificent waterfall, which descended from the cliffs on the left. So now adieu to the mountains. I shall climb no more this year. Positively I feel as downcast as the hot-brained youth of Macedon when no more worlds were left for him to conquer.