Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland

by G. F. Browne

From the appearance of the bread and cheese when the meal had come to an end, I concluded that my companion had changed his mind in the course of feeding, and had resolved to compress the whole eating of the day into one large refreshment here. The consumptive powers of the Swiss-German peasant, when his meal is franked, has not unfrequently reminded me of the miraculous eating performed by a yellow domino of that nation, at the fête by which Louis XIV. celebrated the second marriage of the Dauphin. This domino was of large size, and ate and drank voraciously throughout the entertainment, which lasted many hours, retiring every five minutes or so, and returning speedily with unabated appetite. The thing became at length so portentous, that enquiries were instituted, and it was found that the trusty Cent-Suisses had joined at a domino, and were drawing lots all through the evening for the next turn at eating; so that each man's time was necessarily limited, and he accordingly made the most of it.

We soon took to the rocks, and found them, as the charcoal-burner had promised, sufficiently stiff work. Colonel (now General) Dufour visited the Schafloch with a party of officers in 1822, and he describes[^[57]] the path as a dangerous one, so much so that several of the gallant members of his party could not reach the cave: he uses rather large words about the precipices, and it is a matter of observation that military service on the Continent tends to induce a habit of body which is not the most suitable for doubtful climbing. The mountain seemed to be composed, in this part, of horizontal layers of crumbling shale, with a layer now and then of stone, about the thickness of an ordinary house-tile. The stone layers project from the looser masonry, and afford an excellent foot-hold; but a slip might be unpleasant. Every one who has done even a small amount of climbing has met with an abundance of places where 'a slip would be certain death,' as people are so fond of saying; but equally he has discovered that a slip is the last thing he thinks of making in such situations. Christian had told me that if I had the slightest tendency to Schwindelkopf, I must not go by the improvised route; but it proved that there were really no precipices at all, much less any of sufficient magnitude to turn an ordinary head dizzy. He chose these rocks as the text for a long sermon on the necessity for great caution when we should arrive at the cave, telling of an Englishman who had tried to visit it two years before, and had cut his knee so badly with his guide's axe that he had to be carried down the mountain to Gonten, and thence to the steamer for Thun, in which town he lay for many weeks in the hands of the German doctor; this last assertion being by no means incredible. Also, of a native who attempted the cave alone, and, making one false step near the top of a fall of ice, slipped down and down almost for ever, and finally landed with broken limbs on a floor of ice, where he was found, two days after, frozen stiff, but still alive.

It was not necessary to mount much, for we were almost as high as the mouth of the cave, according to Christian's belief, and our work consisted chiefly in passing along the face of the rock, round projecting buttresses and re-entering angles, till we reached that part of the mountain where we might expect to find our glacière. While we were thus engaged, two hoarse and ominous ravens took us under their charge, and accompanied us with unpleasant screams, which argued the proximity of food or nest. We soon found that we had disturbed their meal, for we came to marks of blood, and saw that some animal had slipped on the rocks above, and landed on the ledge on which we were walking, bounding off again on to a shelf below, where the ravens had already torn the body to pieces. I must confess to a very considerable shudder when we discovered the reason of their screams, and neither of us seemed to enjoy the circling and croaking of the unclean birds.

Very soon after this, Christian announced that we had reached the cave, and a steep little climb of six feet or so brought us to the entrance. Here we were haunted still by the presence of pieces of the fallen goat, which lay about here and there on the ground; and the flutter of wings overhead explained to us that the old ravens had built their nest in the mouth of the cave, and had brought morsels of raw flesh to their young ones, which were scarcely able to fly. I am ashamed to say that we were so angry with the old birds for shrieking so suggestively in our ears, and parading before us the results of a slip on the rocks, that we charged ourselves with stones, and put an end to the most noisy member of the foul brood; Christian making some of the worst shots it is possible to conceive, and raining blocks of stone and lumps of wood in all directions, with such reckless impartiality, that the only safe place seemed to be between him and the bird. One of us, at least, regretted the useless cruelty as soon as it was perpetrated, and it came back upon me very reproachfully at an awkward part of our return journey.

The Schafloch does not take its name from the bones contained in it, as is the case with the Kühloch in Franconia,[^[58]] but from the fact that when a sudden storm comes on, the sheep and goats make their way to the cave for shelter, never, I was told, going so far as the commencement of the ice. The entrance faces ESE., and is of large size, with a low wall built partly across it to increase the shelter for the sheep: Dufour calls the entrance 50 feet wide and 25 feet high, but I found the width at the narrowest part, a few yards within the entrance, to be 33 feet.[^[59]] For a short distance the cave passes horizontally into the rock, in a westerly direction, and is quite light; it then turns sharp to the south, the floor beginning to fall, and candles becoming necessary. Here the height increases considerably, and the way lies over a wild confusion of loose masses of rock, which have apparently fallen from the roof, and make progression very difficult. We soon reached a point where ice began to appear among the stones; and as we advanced it became more and more prominent, till at length we lost sight of the rock, and stood on solid ice.

On either side of the cave was a grand column of ice forming the portal, as it were, through which we must pass to further beauties. The ice-floor rose to meet these columns in a graceful swelling curve, perfectly continuous, so that the general effect was that of two columns whose roots expanded and met in the middle of the cave; and, indeed, that may have been really the order of formation. The right-hand column was larger than its fellow, but, owing to the more gradual expansion of the lower part of its height, and the steepness of the consequent slope, we were unable to measure its girth at any point where it could be fairly called a column. Christian had been in the cave a few days before, and he assured me that the swelling base of this column had increased very considerably since his last visit, pointing out a solid surface of ice, at one part of our track, where he had before walked on bare rock. The cave was by no means extremely cold, that is to say, it was rather above than below the freezing point, and the splashing of drops of water was audible on all sides; so that, if Christian spoke the truth,--it was sad to be so often reminded of Legree's plaintive soliloquy in the opening pages of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'--the explanation, I suppose, might be that the drops of water, falling on the top of the column or stalagmite, run down the sides, and carry with them some melted portion from the upper part of the column, and after a course of a few yards become so far refrigerated as to form ice.[^[60]] The pillar on the left was more approachable, but we were unable to determine its dimensions; for on the outer side, where it stood a few feet or yards clear of the side of the cave, the rounded ice at its foot fell off at once into a dark chasm, a sort of smooth enticing Bergschrund, which we did not care to face. Christian declared that this column was not so high as it was a day or two before, which may go to support the theory expressed above, or at least that part of it which depends upon the supposition of water dropping on to the head of the column, and melting certain portions of it.

If we were unable to take the external dimensions of this column, I had no doubt that we should find internal investigations interesting; so, to Christian's surprise, I began to chop a hole in it, about two feet from the ground, and, having made an entrance sufficiently large, proceeded to get into the cavity which presented itself. The flooring of the dome-shaped grotto in which I found myself, was loose rock, at a level about two feet below the surface of the ice-floor on which Christian still stood. The dome itself was not high enough to allow me to stand upright, and from the roof, principally from the central part, a complex mass of delicate icicles passed down to the floor, leaving a narrow burrowing passage round, which was itself invaded by icicles from the lower part of the sloping roof, and by stubborn stalagmites of ice rising from the floor.[^[61]] The details of this central cluster of icicles, and in fact of every portion of the interior of the strange grotto, were exceedingly lovely, and I crushed with much regret, on hands and knees, through fair crystal forests and frozen dreams of beauty. In making the tour of this grotto, contorting my body like a snake to get in and out among the ice-pillars, and do as little damage as might be, but yet, with all my care, accompanied by the incessant shiver and clatter of breaking and falling ice, I came to a hole in the ground, too dark and deep for one candle to show its depth; so I called to Christian to come in, thinking that two candles might show it better. He asked if I really meant it, and assured me he could be of no use; but I told him that he must come, and informed him that he, being the smaller man, would find the passage quite easy. It was very fortunate that I had not waited a minute longer before summoning him, for just as he had dropped into the hollow, and was beginning his journey to the side where I now was, a drop of water and a simultaneous icicle came upon my candle, and left me in darkness, curled up like a dormouse in a nest of ice, at the edge of the newly discovered shaft; while my troubles were brought to a climax by an incursion of icy drops, which had me at their mercy. If all this had happened while Christian was still outside, he would probably have staid there wringing his hands till it was time to go home, and I should certainly not have liked to move without a light. As it was, I did not inform him of the catastrophe, but let him come toiling on, wondering audibly what madness could drive Herrschaft into such places; and when he arrived, we cut off the wet wick, and lighted the candle again. We could make nothing of the hole, so he returned by the way he had come, and I completed the tour of the grotto, finding the same difficult passage, and the same ice beauties, all the way round.

Having squeezed ourselves out again through the narrow hole, we now passed between the two gigantic columns, and found that the sea of ice became still broader and bolder. I much regret that I neglected to take any measurements in this part of the cave; but farther down, where it was certainly not so broad, I found the width of the ice to be 75 feet. It was throughout of the crystalline character which prevails in all the large masses in the glacières I have visited. For some distance beyond the columns, we found neither stalactites nor stalagmites--indeed, I forgot to look at the roof--until we came to the edge of a glorious ice-fall, down which Christian said it was impossible to go--no one had ever been farther than where we now stood. I have seen no subterranean ice-fall so grand as this, round and smooth, and perfectly unbroken, passing down, like the rapids of some river too deep for its surface to be disturbed, into darkness against which two candles prevailed nothing. The fall in the Upper Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres was strange enough, but it was very small, and led to a confined corner of the cavern; whereas this of the Schafloch rolls down majestically, cold and grey, into a dark gulf of which we could see neither the roof nor the end, while the pieces of ice which we despatched down the steep slope could be heard going on and on, as M. Soret says, à une très-grande distance. The shape, also, of the fall was very striking. Beginning at the left wall of the cave, the edge ran out obliquely towards the middle, when it suddenly turned and struck straight across to the right-hand wall, so that we were able to stand on a tongue, as it were, in the middle of the top of the fall. To add to the effect, precisely from this tongue or angle a fine column of ice sprang out of the very crest of the fall, rising to or towards the roof, and to this we clung to peer down into the darkness.

The rope we had brought was not long, and the idea was hopeless of cutting steps down this great fall, leading we knew not where, with an incline which it frightened Christian even to look at. I began to consider, however, whether it was not possible to make our way down the left branch of the ice, which fell rather towards the side wall than into the dark gulf below. On examining more closely, I found that a large stone, or piece of rock, projected from the face of this branch of the fall, about 12 feet from the top, and to this I determined to descend, as a preliminary to further attempts, the candles not showing us what there was beyond. Accordingly, I tied on the rope, and planted Christian where he had a safe footing, telling him to hold tight if I slipped, for he seemed to have little idea what the rope was meant for. The ice was very hard, and cutting steps downwards with a short axe is not easy work; so when I came within 3 or 4 feet of the rock, I forgot the rope, and set off for a short glissade. Christian, of course, thought something was wrong, and very properly put a prompt strain upon the rope, which reduced his Herr to a spread-eagle sort of condition, in which it was difficult to explain matters, so as to procure a release. When that was accomplished, I saw it would be easy to reach the point where the ice met the wall, so I called to Christian to come down, which he did in an unpremeditated, avalanche fashion; and then, by cutting steps here and there, and making use of odd points of rock, we skirted down the edge of the great fall, and reached at last the lower regions.

When I came to read Dufour's account of his visit in 1822, I found that the ice must have increased very much since his time. He uses sufficiently large words, speaking of the vaste, horrible et pourtant magnifique--of the horreur du séjour, and the grandeur des demeures souterraines; but he only calls the glorious ice-fall a plan incliné, and says that the whole was less remarkable for the amount of ice, than for the characteristics indicated by the words I have quoted. He says that it required une assez forte dose de courage to slip down to the stone of which I have spoken; the fact being that at the time of my visit it would have been impossible to do so with any chance of stopping oneself, for the flat surface of the stone was all but even with the ice. M. Soret, who saw the cave in 1860, determined that cords were then absolutely necessary for the descent, which he did not attempt; and the only Englishman I have met who has seen this cave, tells me that he and his party went no farther than the edge of the fall.[^[62]] Probably each year's accumulation on the upper floor of ice has added to the height and rapidity of the fall; but at any rate, when Dufour was there, des militaires--as he dashingly tells--were not to be stopped, and he and his party--such of them as had not been already stopped by the precipices outside--let themselves slip down to the stone, and thence descended as we did.