CHAPTER XI.
THE GLACIÈRE OF CHAPPET-SUR-VILLAZ, ON THE MONT PARMELAN, NEAR ANNECY.
We started southwards from the Glacière of Grand Anu, for such they said was the proper name for the cave last described, and passed over some of the wildest walking I have seen. All the most striking features of a glacier were here reproduced in stone: now narrow deep crevasses which only required a slight spring; now much more formidable rents, which we were obliged to circumvent by a détour; now dark mysterious holes with vertical shell-like partitions at various depths; and now a perfect moulin, with fluted sides and every detail appertaining to those remarkable pits, the hollow plunge of falling water alone excepted. In other parts, the smooth slab-like appearance of the surface reminded me of a curious district on one of the summits of the Jura, where the French frontier takes the line of crest, and the old stones marked with the fleur-de-lys and the Helvetic cross are still to be found. In those border regions the old historic distinctions are still remembered, and the frontier Vaudois call the neighbouring French Bourguignons--or, in their patois, Borgognons. They keep up the tradition of old hatreds; and the strange bleak summit, with its smooth slabs of Jura-chalk lying level with the surface, is so much like a vast cemetery, that the wish in old times has been father to the thought, and they call it still the Cemetery of the Burgundians, Cimetiros ai Borgognons.[[73]]
After a time, we reached a tumbled chaos of rock, much resembling the ice-fall of a glacier, and, on descending, and rounding a low spur of the mountain so as to take a north-westerly course, we found ourselves in a perfect paradise of flowers. One orchis I shall always regret. There seemed to be only a single head, closely packed with flowerets, and strongly scented; it was a pure white, not the green and straw-coloured white of other scented orchises. There were large patches of the delicate faux-lis (Paradisia liliastrum); and though there might not be anything very rare, and the lovely glacier-flowers were of course wanting, the whole was a rich feast for anyone who cares more for delicacy and colour than for botany.
The maire told us that he had found the glacière, for which we were now in search, two years before, when he accompanied the government surveyor to show him the forests and mountains which formed his property. As he had on that occasion approached the spot from the other side, we walked a long way to place him exactly where the surveyor and he had crossed the ridge of the mountain, and then started him down from the Col in the direction they had taken. He was certain of two things: first, that they had passed by the Col between the Mont Parmelan and the Montagne de l'Eau; and, secondly, that the glacière was within five minutes of the highest point of the Col. For three-quarters of an hour we all broke our shins, and the officials the Third Commandment. They invoked more saints than I had ever heard of, and, in default, did not scruple to appeal with shocking volubility to darker aid. It was all of no use,--and well it might be; for when we had given it up in despair, after long patience and a considerable period of the contrary, and had descended for half an hour in the direction of a third glacière, I chanced to look back, and saw that the Col in the neighbourhood of which we had been searching lay between two points of the Montagne de l'Eau; while the true Col between that mountain and the Mont Parmelan lay considerably to the west. When it appears that a guide has probably made a mistake, the only plan is to assume quietly that it is so, as if it were a matter of no consequence, and then he may sometimes be decoyed into allowing the fact: I therefore pointed out to the maire the true Col, and told him that was the one by which he had passed southwards, when he found the glacière; to which, with unnecessary strength of language, he at once assented. But all my efforts to take him back were unavailing. Nothing in the world should carry him up the mountain again, now that he had happily got so far down. I worked his best and his worst feelings with equal want of success; even national jealousy failed, and he was content to know that a French maire had not pluck to face three-quarters of an hour of climbing, when an English priest was ready to lead the way. The schoolmaster declined to go alone with me, on the ground that neither of us knew the mountain, and threatening clouds were gathering all around. When, at last, I proposed to go by myself, they became menacingly obstructive, and declared that I should certainly not be allowed to face the intricacy of the mountain in a fog. Besides, as the maire put it, he was sure of the way to the third glacière; and if I were to go up alone to look for the second, I should lose a certainty for a chance, as there was not time to visit both. So with an ill grace I continued the descent with them, being restored to good humour before long by the beauty of the Lake of Annecy, as seen from our elevated position.
It is so impossible to accept in full the accounts one picks up of natural curiosities, that I give the maire's description of the stray glacière only for what it is worth. It was not extracted without much laborious cross-examination--sais paw vous le dire being the average answer to my questions. The entrance to the cave is about twice as high as a man, and is in a small shallow basin of rock and grass. The floor is level with the entrance, and the roof rises inside to a good height. In shape it is like a Continental bread-oven; and at the time of the maire's visit, the floor was a confused mass of ice and stones, the former commencing at the very entrance. There was no ice except on the floor, the area of which might be as large as that of the surface of the ice in the Glacière of Grand Anu. No pit was to be seen, and not a drop of water. Snow could have drifted in easily, but they saw no signs of any remaining. If this account be true, especially with respect to the position of the entrance and the horizontal direction of the floor, I have seen no glacière like it.
We descended for a time through fir-woods, and then again down steep and barren rocks, till we reached the sharp slope of grass which so frequently connects the base of a mountain with the more civilised forests and the pasturages below. The maire led us for some distance along the top of this grass slope, towards the west, skirting the rocks till they became precipitous and lofty, when he said we must be near our point. Still we went on and on without seeing any signs of it, and our guide seemed in despair; and I, for one, entirely gave up the third cave to the same fate as the second, and became very sulky and remonstrative. The entrance to the glacière, the maire told us, was a hole in the face of the highest rocks, 3 or 4 yards only above the grass; and as we had now reached a part of the mountain where the rock springs up smooth and high, and we could command the whole face, and yet saw nothing, the schoolmaster came over to my side, and told the maire he was a humbug. However, we were then within a few yards of the desired spot, and half-a-dozen steps showed us a small cheminée, down which a strong and icy current of wind blew. The maire shouted a shout of triumph, and climbed the cheminée; and when we also had done the necessary gymnastics, we found a hole facing almost due north, all within being dark. The current blew so determinedly, that matches were of no use, and I was obliged to seek a sheltered corner before I could light a candle; and, when lighted, the candle was with difficulty kept from being blown out. No ice was visible, nor any signs of such a thing,--nothing but a very irregular narrow cave, with darkness at the farther end. As we advanced, we found that the floor of the cave came to a sudden end, and the darkness developed into a strange narrow fissure, which reached out of sight upwards, and out of sight below; and down this the maire rolled stones, saying that there was the glacière, if only one could get at it without a tourneau. Considering the persistency with which he had throughout declared that there was no possible need for a rope, I gave him some of my mind here, in that softened style which his official dignity demanded; but he excused himself by saying that the gentleman who owned the glacière, and extracted the ice for private use only, was now living at his summer châlet, a mile or two off, and he, the maire, had felt confident that the tourneau would have been fitted up for the season.
On letting a candle down from the termination of the floor, we found that the perpendicular drop was not more than 12 feet, and from the shelf thus reached it seemed very possible to descend to the farther depths of the fissure; but I had become so sceptical, that I persisted in asserting that there was no ice below. The maire's manner, also, was strange, and I suspected that the cold current of air had caused the place to be called a glacière, with any other qualification on the part of the cave. One thing was evident,--no snow could reach the fissure. M. Métrai was determined that I must not attempt the descent, pointing out, what was quite true, that though the fall was not great, there seemed no possibility of getting back up the smooth rock. His arguments increased my suspicions; so, leaving all apparatus behind, I dropped down to join the candle, rather hoping to have the satisfaction of sending them off for a rope, in case I could not achieve the last few feet in returning, and knowing that there was no danger of the fate which once threatened the chamois-hunting Kaiser Max.[[74]]
The drop turned out to be a mere nothing, and, taking the candle, I scrambled on, down the sloping floor of the fissure, towards the heart of the mountain, expecting every moment that my further passage would be stopped by solid rock. But, after reaching a part so narrow that I was obliged to mount by both sides at once in order to get past it, I found a commodious gallery, opening out into a long and narrow and very lofty cavern, still only a fissure, the floor of which continued the regular and rapid slope down which I had so far come. A short way farther down, an opening appeared to the left; and I turned off the main passage into a horizontal gallery or chamber, with a floor of ice resting on rock and stones. This chamber seemed to be 3 or 4 yards wide at the entrance, narrowing regularly to 4 1/2 feet. It was 40 feet long, and at the farther end, which would not have been visible from the entrance, on account of a slight bend in the ice-gallery, even if there had been any light, it was closed by an ice-cascade 7 yards high and 4 1/2 feet broad at the bottom. The ice of much of this cascade was so clear, that I saw the rock upon which it rested, or in some parts did not rest, quite plainly, and the large air-cavities in the structure were beautifully shown by the richly-coloured rock behind. None of the current which we had observed above, and which had nearly baffled my protecting care of the candle during the descent, came from this gallery; but I find it written in my notes that the gallery was very cold. Thaw was going on, rather rapidly; and the water stole out by the entrance, and ran down the main descent, over ice and among rocks, into the farther darkness.