“Well, the stones are always falling from the bare sides of the gorge; they drop on to the glacier, and in course of time are washed by the melting ice into the crevasses and down to the bare rock beneath the glacier. There they glide down, with its weight upon them, right over the rock, and the surface is worn off from the fallen stone and the bed rock in a thin paste, which is washed away by the glacier. Then, as it descends, it of course discolours the water.”
“Shall we go down to the toe of the glacier!” said the guide.
“Yes; come along.”
“Can we trust the young herr to descend?”
Dale leaned forward to gaze down the rugged slope, which was excessively steep, but broken up into rift and gully, offering plenty of foot and hand-hold.
“What do you think, Saxe?” he said. “Can you manage to get down there?”
“Get down there?” said the lad contemptuously; “why, I’d race you to the bottom.”
“No doubt, and be down first,” said Dale quietly; “but I should be ready to go on, and you would want carrying to the nearest chalet to wait for a surgeon.”
“What, after getting down that bit of a place?”
“You stupid fellow,” said Dale testily; “that bit of a place is a precipice of five hundred feet. How am I to impress upon you that everything here is far bigger than you think? Look here,” he continued, pointing: “do you see that cow yonder, on that bit of green slope beside those overhanging rocks?”