Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland

by G. F. Browne

The interior of the house, where the bedrooms were, gave forth an odour which must be familiar to all who have burrowed in out-of-the-way places in France, approaching more nearly, perhaps, to the smell of damp cocks and hens than anything else; and the bedroom door was guarded by a huge mis-shapen dog, which evidently intended to pass the night there, if it could not get into the room itself. The street on to which the window looked was still populous with the inhabitants of Die; and a man with whom I had already had a conversation respecting the glacière, who appeared to perform some of the functions of landlord of the hotel, was audibly engaged in hiring a man to accompany me on the following day. The man whom he was attempting to persuade was evidently of an independent turn of mind, and said that as it would be an affair of fifteen or sixteen hours at least, he would not go through so much unless his proposed comrade were a true bonhomme; a difficulty which the landlord set at rest by asseverations so ready and so circumstantial, that I determined to take everything he might tell me, on any subject, with many grains of allowance.

It was only natural to expect a night of horrors; but in this I was most agreeably disappointed, and the few hours passed quietly enough till it was time to get up. By morning light, the salle-à-manger did so bristle with squalor that the kitchen was made the breakfast-room; though as that meal only lasted two minutes, and meant nothing beyond an attempt to eat some of the bread I had been unable to eat the night before, one place was much the same as another. It is generally believed that coffee is to be obtained in perfection in France; but that belief is not founded on experience of the provinces, and had long ceased to be a part of my creed: nevertheless, with the idea that there is always some redeeming-point in the darkest situation, I had hopes of the coffee of Die, in spite of the appearance of the pan; and if these hopes had been realised, the place might still have been tolerable. But they were not realised. When the landlady was asked for the promised coffee, she brought out a small earthenware pitcher containing a black liquid, and proceeded to bury its lower extremity in the hot embers of the wood fire, by which means the liquid was speedily warmed up, and also thickened with unnecessary ashes. When served--in the same dusty pitcher--it had a green and mouldy taste, combined with a sour bitterness which made it utterly impossible as an article of food, and so the breakfast was confined to the rejected fragments of the loaf of the preceding night.

The guide, or comrade as he preferred to call himself, appeared in good time, and we started about half-past six, under a sun already oppressively hot, and through heavy flaky dust, which made us feel very thankful when our route branched off from the high road. Liotir was strong in mulberry trees and vines, for he was a keeper of silkworms, and a wine-merchant. Silkworms had not been profitable for a year or two, and he was almost in low spirits when he talked of them.[^[94]] An epidemic had visited the district, and the worms ate voraciously and refused to spin--a disease which he believed to be beyond the power of medicine.[^[95]] As is so often the case with the Frenchman, as compared with the Englishman of corresponding social status, he had his information cut and dried, and poured it out without hesitation. Silkworms' eggs cost 15, 20, or 25 francs an ounce, according to quality; and an ounce of good seed should produce from two to three hundred francs' worth of cocoons. A man who 'makes' an ounce of seed requires six tables, 8 feet by 4, for his cages; and as some men make thirty-five ounces, chambers of great size are necessary for the accommodation of their worms; but breeders to so large an extent as this are the princes of the trade. As we passed a farmhouse surrounded by mulberry trees and vineyards, my companion informed me that the farmer was his partner in worms and wine both, and that the wine promised to be the better speculation this year, for the fruit was in immense abundance. I saw afterwards that, at the time of vintage, grapes sold for pressing at from 6 to 10 francs the hundred kilos, while 12 and 13 francs was the price in 1863, and that in some districts of the Drôme the owners of the presses had not barrels enough for even the first pressing.

The great want of wood on the hills in whose neighbourhood we now found ourselves, attracted attention in the time of Louis XIV., and that sovereign passed severe laws for the protection of the forests that still remained. As usual, the mere severity of the laws made them fail of their object. Banishment and the galleys were the punishment for unauthorised cutting of forest trees, and death if fire were used. There is a paper in the Journal de Physique of 1789,[^[96]] on the disappearance of the forests of Dauphiné, pointing out that when the woods are removed from the sides of mountains, the soil soon follows, and the district becomes utterly valueless. The writer traced the mischief to the emancipation of serfs, and the consequent formation of communes, where each man could do that which was right in his own eyes.

At any rate, whatever the reason, nothing can be conceived more bare than the dun-coloured rounded hills between the town of Die and the Col de Vassieux, towards which we were making our way. The whole face of the country had the same parched look, and the soil seemed to be composed entirely of small stones, without any signs of moisture even in the watercourses. The Col de Vassieux is not much more than 4,000 feet high, and forms a saddle between the Pic de S. Genix (5,450 feet) and the But de l'Aiglette (5,200 feet). A new foot-road has been made to the Col, with many windings; and great care has been taken to plant the sides of the hill with oak and hazel; so that already there is some appearance of coppice, and in the course of time there will be shade by the way--a luxury for which we longed in vain. The lower ground was covered with little scrubs of box, and with lavender, dwarfed and dry; but near the summit of the Col the lavender became vigorous and luxuriant, and carpeted the hillside with a rich abundance of blue, tempting us more than once to lie down and roll on the fragrant bed; though some of the older roots were not sufficiently yielding to make that performance as satisfactory as it might have been. This lavender is highly prized by the silkworm-keepers of Die, its bushy heads being almost exclusively used for the worms to spin their cocoons in.

When we reached the top of the Col, Liotir confessed that he did not know which way to turn, and we agreed to follow the path till we should find some one to direct us. There was a farmhouse at no great distance, and thither we bent our steps; but the sole inhabitant could give no assistance, and, in default of information, Liotir generously proposed to treat me to a bottle of wine, over which we might discuss our further proceedings. The state of fever, however, to which the garlic and the dirt of Die had brought me, made it seem impossible to eat or drink anything; so I suggested instead that I should treat him, and that seemed to be rather what he had meant by his proposal. Nothing much came of our discussion, and we marched on hot and faint for an hour more, when a casual man told us that our straight line to the Foire de Fondeurle lay across the plain on our left hand, and up a most objectionable-looking hill beyond, thickly covered with brushwood and showing no signs of a path.

As we crossed the plain, there was still the same total absence of water, and we reached the bottom of the hill in a state of mind and body which rebelled against the exertion of struggling with the sand and shingle and brushwood. Liotir thought it was useless to attempt it with no hope of water, and I held much the same view, only it was impossible really to think of giving it up. When at last we had surmounted all the difficulties which beset us, and stood on the highest point which had so far been in sight, we found ourselves on the edge of a vast plain of parched grass, with nothing to guide us in one direction rather than another. There was no human being in sight, no sign of water, nor any particle of shade; nothing but grass, brown and monotonous, with white cliffs miles away at the extremity of the plain. This was evidently the Foire de Fondeurle, and in it somewhere lay the glacière, if only we could make out in which direction to begin to traverse the plain. In the earlier part of this century, a very famous fair was held on this wild and out-of-the-way table-land, to which many thousands of horses and mules and cattle of various kinds were brought from all quarters; but the fair has fallen off so much, that the man who had turned us up the last hill said there were only fourteen head of cattle in 1863, and very few of those were sold. M. Héricart de Thury describes this plain as lying in the calcareous sub-Alpine range of the south-east of France. The woods here terminate at a height of 5,147 feet above the sea, and the Foire de Fondeurle lies immediately above this point.

At last we made a bold dash across the plain, and after a time came upon some sheep, standing in a thick row, with their heads thrust under a low bank which afforded a little shade; and at no great distance from them sat the shepherd. He was a cripple, and his clothes were something worse than rags. He offered us a portion of the water he had in a detestable-looking skin; but he assured us it was quite warm, and had not been good to begin with, so we did not try it, though we were thirsty enough to have hailed a muddy pool with delight. Our new acquaintance knew nothing of the glacière, but he belonged himself to the Chalêt of Fondeurle, and as that was the only house on the whole plain, he told us to make for it. The surface of the plain seemed to have fallen through in many places, forming larger and smaller pits with steep sides of limestone. These were often of the size of a large field, and, as the deeper of them required circumvention, the shepherd told us that we must follow the line of little cairns which we should find here and there on our way, the only guide across the plain. He could not be sure himself in what direction the châlet lay; but if we kept to a certain tortuous line, we should come to it in time.

The way proved to be so very long, that we doubted whether such a consummation of our wishes would ever arrive: but at length, in a small dip at the farthest extremity of the plain, we saw the châlet, and, what was much more to us, saw a little run of water, carried from the rising ground by wooden pipes. It will be well for any future visitor to the châlet to go very warily, and to intrench himself in a strong position when he sees half-a-dozen huge dogs like black and white bears come out to attack him. Liotir had a stout stick, and I had a formidable ice-axe; and, moreover, we fortunately secured a wall in our rear: but with all this the dogs were nearly too much for us, and Liotir was pressing me earnestly to chop at the ringleader's head, when a man came and called off 'Dragon,' and the others then dispersed. The new-comer wished to know our business, but, without satisfying his curiosity, we rushed to the water-trough, and drank and used in washing an amount of water which he evidently grudged us. Then we were able to tell him that our business was something to eat for Liotir, and a guide to the glacière; though I trembled when I suggested the latter, for, after all our labours, I had a sort of fear that the cave would prove a myth. On this point the man cleared away all doubts at once,--we could certainly have a guide, as the patron would be sure to let one of them go with us. As to food, there was more doubt, for the master was not yet at home, and his wife would not be able to give us an answer without consulting him. The wife confirmed this statement: they saw very few strangers, and did not profess to supply food to people crossing the plain. I assured her that we intended to pay well for anything she could let us have, but she merely rejoined that they did not keep an auberge; however, her husband would be home some time in the course of the afternoon--it was now about half-past twelve--and she could ask his opinion on the subject. But Liotir objected that he was meanwhile dying of hunger, and the monsieur of thirst which only milk or cream could assuage; he suggested that some one should be sent to look for the husband, and obtain his permission for us to be fed. To this she assented, very dubiously, and with a constrained air, as if there were some mysterious reason why the presence of strangers was peculiarly unacceptable on that particular afternoon. At any rate, she said when pressed, she thought there could be no harm in our entering the châlet and sitting down on a bench, where we should be sheltered from the sun.

Here accordingly we sat, more or less patiently, till the master himself appeared. He had no welcome for us; but he was willing that we should eat some of his black bread, and try his wine. Liotir begged for cheese, and the wife was told she might supply cheese of two kinds, and also cream, for the monsieur evidently was malade and could not swallow wine. The cream and the black bread were delicious; but still the horrors of Die hung about me, and I could only dispose of such a small amount, that Liotir waxed funny, and told me it would never do for me to die there, as there was not earth enough to scrape a grave in on the whole plain. Then, being a practical man, he declared he should like to contract for my keep, and thought he could afford to do it at very small cost to me, and still leave a fair margin for himself. He thought it right to make up for my want of appetite; and so, in addition to his own share, he took in an exemplary manner the share of wine which I should have taken, had I been a man like himself. The master of the châlet sat on the family bed, smoking silently and sullenly; and as soon as Liotir had come to an end of his second bottle, he proposed to accompany us himself to the cave, as he doubted whether any of his men knew the way, and he was sure they were all busy. When I came to pay his wife for what we had consumed, I administered thanks as well as money; to which she sternly rejoined, 'Who pays need not give thanks;' and to that surly view she held, in spite of my attempts to soften her down. There was, after all, much force in what she said, under the circumstances. They had given us no welcome, nothing but mere food, and all they expected in return was a due amount of money; thanks were a mockery in their eyes.