[BL] [See map] of Rhône Glacier, on [p. 58].
Farther eastward, other ice-streams from the Alps became predominant, one of which, moving down the Reuss, deployed out upon the country lying north of Lucerne and Zug. Still farther down, the ancient glacier which descended the Limmatt spread itself out over the hills and lowlands about Zürich, one of its moraines of retrocession nearly dividing the lake into two portions.
Guyot and others have shown that the superficial deposits of this portion of Switzerland are just such as would be distributed by glaciers coming down from the above-mentioned Alpine valleys. Uniting together north of Zürich, these glaciers pushed onward as far as the Rhine below Schaffhausen. In Frickthal the glacial ice was still 1,200 feet thick, and at Kaisterberg between 400 and 500 feet.
At Lucerne there is a remarkable exposure of pot-holes, and a glaciated surface such as could be produced only by the combined action of moving ice and running water; thus furnishing to tourists an instructive object-lesson. Among the remarkable instances of boulders transported a long distance in Switzerland, is that of a block of granite carried from the Valais to the vicinity of Soleure, a distance of one hundred and fifteen miles, which weighs about 4,100 tons. “The celebrated Pierre-à-Bot, above Neufchâtel, measures 50’ × 20’ × 40’, and contains about 40,000 cubic feet of stone; while the Pierre-des-Marmettes, near Monthey, contains no less than 60,840 cubic feet.”
The ancient glacier of the Rhine, receiving its initial impulse in the same centre as that of the Rhône, fully equalled it in all its dimensions. Descending eastward from its source near the Schneestock to Chur, a distance of fifty miles, it turned northward and continued forty-five miles farther to the head of Lake Constance, where it spread out in fan-shape, extending northwest to Thiengen, below Schaffhausen, and covering a considerable area north and northeastward of the lake, reaching in the latter direction Ulm, upon the Danube—the whole distance of the movement being more than one hundred and fifty miles. Through other valleys tributary to the Danube, glaciers descended upon the upper plains of Bavaria, from the Tyrolese Alps to the vicinity of Munich. From Gross Glockner as a centre in the Noric Alps, vast rivers of ice, of which the Pasterzen Glacier is the remnant, poured far down into the valleys of the Inn and the Enns on the north and into that of the Drave on the southeast. Farther eastward in this part of Europe the mountains seem to have been too low to have furnished centres for any general dispersion of glacial ice.
