The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

“The colossal furrows of rocks and gravel along the edges of the ice at the shores of the sea, are produced by the action of the frost and the avalanches, with the march of the glacier against the sides of the mountains. Nothing can be more singular than these ridges of mountain debris, apparently plowed up and worked off by the moving of the whole bed of ice down the valley. Near the shore, the sea is turbid with these rocks and gravel; but as you go out into the channel, the ice becomes clearer and more glittering, the crevices and fissures deeper and more dangerous, and all the phenomena more astonishing. Deep, blue, pellucid founts of ice-cold water lie in the opening gulfs; and sometimes, putting your ear to the yawning fissures, you may hear the rippling of the rills below, that from the bosom of the glacier are hurrying down to constitute the Arve, bursting furiously forth from the great ice-cavern in the valley.

“This Mer de Glace is an easy and excellent residence for the scientific study of the glaciers, a subject of very great interest, formerly filled with mysteries, which the bold and persevering investigations and theories of some modern naturalists have quite cleared up. The strange movements of the glaciers, their apparent willful rejection of extraneous bodies and substances to the surface and the margin, their increase and decrease, long remained invested with something of the supernatural: they seemed to have a soul and a life of their own. They look motionless and silent, yet they are always moving and sounding on, and they have great voices that give prophetic warning of the weather to the shepherds of the Alps. Scientific men have set up huts upon the sea, and landmarks on the mountains opposite, to test the progress of the icy masses, and in this way it was found that a cabin constructed by Professor Hugi on the glacier of the Aar, had traveled, between the years 1827 and 1840, a distance of forty-six hundred feet. It is supposed that the Mer de Glace moves down between four and five hundred feet annually.

“It is impossible to form a grander image of the rigidity and barrenness, the coldness and death of winter, than when you stand among the billows of one of these frozen seas; and yet it is here that Nature locks up in her careful bosom the treasures of the Alpine valleys, the sources of rich summer verdure and vegetable life. They are hoarded up in winter, to be poured forth beneath the sun, and with the sun in summer. Some of the largest rivers in Europe take their rise from the glaciers, and give to the Swiss valleys their most abundant supply of water, in the season when ordinary streams are dried up. This is a most interesting provision in the economy of nature, for if the glaciers did not exist, those verdant valleys into which the summer sun pours with such fervor, would be parched with drought. So the mountains are parents of perpetual streams, and the glaciers are reservoirs of plenty.

“The derivation of the German name for glacier, gletscher, is suggested as coming not from their icy material, but their perpetual motion, from glitschen, to glide; more probably, however, from the idea of gliding upon their surface. These glaciers come down from the air, down out of heaven, a perpetual frozen motion, ever changing and gliding, from the first fall of snow in the atmosphere, through the state of consolidated grinding blocks of ice, and then into musical streams that water the valleys. First it is a powdery, feathery snow, then granulated like hail, and denominated firn, forming vast beds and sheets around the highest mountain summits, then frozen into masses, by which time it has traveled down to within seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, where commences the great ice-ocean that fills the uninhabitable Alpine valleys, unceasingly freezing, melting and moving down. It has been estimated by Saussure and others, that these seas of ice, at their greatest thickness, are six or eight hundred feet deep. They are traversed by deep fissures, and as they approach the great precipices, over which they plunge like a cataract into the vales, they are split in all directions, and heaved up into waves, reefs, peaks, pinnacles and minarets. Underneath they are traversed by as many galleries and caverns, through which run the rills and torrents constantly gathering from the melting masses above. These innumerable streams, gathering in one as they approach the termination of the glacier, rush out from beneath it, under a great vault of ice, and thus are born into the breathing world, full-grown roaring rivers, from night, frost and chaos.

“A peasant has been known to have fallen into an ice-gulf in one of these seas, near one of the flowing sub-glacial torrents, and following the course of the stream to the foot of the glacier, he came out alive! The German naturalist, Hugi, set out to explore the recesses of one of the glaciers through the bed of a former torrent, and wandered on in its ice-caverns the distance of a mile. ‘The ice was everywhere eaten away into dome-shaped hollows, varying from two to twelve feet in hight, so that the whole mass of the glacier rested at intervals on pillars, or feet of ice, irregular in size and shape, which had been left standing. As soon as any of these props gave way, a portion of the glacier would of course fall in and move on. A dim twilight, scantily transmitted through the mass of ice above, prevailed in these caverns of ice, not sufficient to allow one to read, except close to the fissures, which directly admitted the daylight. The intense blue of the mass of the ice contrasted remarkably with the pure white of the icy stalactites, or pendents descending from the roof. The water streamed down upon him from all sides, so that, after wandering about for two hours, at times bending and creeping, to get along under the low vault, he returned to the open air, quite drenched and half-frozen.’

“This sea of ice, which embosoms in its farthest recesses a little living flower-garden, whither the humble-bees from Chamouny resort for honey, is also bordered by steep lonely beds of the fragrant rhododendron, or rose of the Alps. This hardy and beautiful flower grows from a bush larger than our sweet-fern, with foliage like the leaves of the ivory-plum. It continues blooming late in the season, and sometimes covers vast declivities on the mountains at a great hight, where one would hardly suppose it possible for a handful of earth to cling to the rocky surface. There, amid the snows and ice of a thousand winters, it pours forth its perfume on the air, though there be none to inhale the fragrance, or praise the sweetness, save only ‘the little busy bees,’ that seem dizzy with delight, as they throw themselves into the bosom of these beds of roses.

“Higher still on the opposite side of this great ice-sea, there are mountain-slopes of grass at the base of stupendous rocky pinnacles, whither the shepherds of the Alps drive their herds from Chamouny, for three months’ pasturage. They have no way of getting them there but across the dangerous glacier; and it is said that the passage is a sort of annual celebration, when men, women and children go up to Montanvert, to witness and assist the difficult transportation. When the herds have crossed, one peasant stays with them for the whole three months of their summer excursion, living upon bread and cheese, with one cow among the herd to supply him with milk. When he is not sleeping, he knits stockings, and ruminates as contentedly as the browsing cattle, his only care being to increase his store.”

VIEW FROM THE BUET.

Before we take our leave of Mont Blanc and of the Alps, the peculiarly brilliant view from the summit of the Buet ought to be noticed. Never, says M. Bourrit, did prospect appear so vast. Toward the west, the Rhone is seen, winding for the space of thirty-six leagues through the rich plains of the Valais; the parts of the river which the mountains cover with their shade seeming like threads of silver, and those which the sun illumines like threads of gold. Beyond the river and its rich plains, the view extends to the highest mountains of Switzerland, St. Gothard, and the Grisons, all covered with ice; while on the east, the hights sink suddenly, from some of the loftiest elevations on the globe, to level plains washed by the sea. Geneva seems like a spot at one end of the lake, and the lake itself like a sinuous band, dividing the fields which it waters. Beyond it are discovered the vast plains of Franche Comte and Burgundy, the mountains of which diminish by almost imperceptible gradations. Here the eye has neither power nor extent of sight to embrace the whole of the objects presented to its view. Amid the fearful aspect of the precipices which descend on every side, what a contrast between the country decorated with all that is smiling and gay, and the sublime spectacle of the Alps, their gloomy and aspiring summits, and, above all, the prodigious hight of Mont Blanc, that enormous colossus of snow and ice, which parts the clouds, and pierces to the very heavens! Below this mountain, which bids defiance to time, and whose eternal ice disregards the dissolving power of the sun, a band of pyramidical rocks appear, the intervals between them being so many valleys of ice, the immensity of which appalls the imagination. Their deep chasms may be distinguished, and the noise of the frequent avalanches (falls of immense masses of snow) presents to the mind the gloomy ideas of horror, devastation and ruin. Farther on, other summits of ice prolong this majestic picture. Among these are the high mountains of the St. Bernard, and those which border on the Boromean islands.

Perhaps there is not in the old world a theater more instructive, or more adapted for reflection, than the summit of this mountain. Where, beside, can be seen such variety and contrast of forms; such results of the efforts of time; such effects of all the climates, and of all the seasons? At one glance may be embraced frosts equally intense with those of Lapland, and the rich and delightful frontiers of Italy; eternal ice, and waving harvests; all the chilling horrors of winter, and the luxuriant vegetation of summer; eighty leagues of fertile plains, covered with towns, with vineyards, with fields and herds, and adjoining to these, a depth of twenty thousand feet of everlasting ice.