The Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers

by John Tyndall

[§ 53.] Ancient Glaciers of Switzerland.

362. You have not lost the memory of the old Moraine, which interested us so much in our first ascent from the source of the Arveiron; for it opened our minds to the fact that at one period of its history the Mer de Glace attained far greater dimensions than it now exhibits. Our experience since that time has enabled us to pursue these evidences of ice action to an extent of which we had then no notion.

363. Close to the existing glacier, for example, we have repeatedly seen the mountain side laid bare by the retreat of the ice. This is especially conspicuous just now, because for the last fifteen or sixteen years the glaciers of the Alps have been steadily shrinking; so that it is no uncommon thing to see the marginal rocks laid bare for a height of fifty, sixty, eighty, or even one hundred feet above the present glacier. On the rocks thus exposed we see the evident marks of the sliding; and our eyes and minds have been so educated in the observation of these appearances that we are now able to detect, with certainty, icemarks, or moraines, ancient or modern, wherever they appear.

364. But the elevations at which we have found such evidence might well shake belief in the conclusions to which they point. Beside the Massa Gorge, at 1,000 feet above the present Aletsch, we found a great old moraine. Descending the meadows between the Bel Alp and Flatten, we found another, now clothed with grass, and bearing a village on its back. But I wish to carry you to a region which exhibits these evidences on a still grander and more impressive scale. We have already taken a brief flight to the valley of Hasli and the Glacier of the Aar. Let us make that glacier our starting-point. Walking from it downwards towards the Grimsel, we pass everywhere over rocks singularly rounded, and fluted, and scarred. These appearances are manifestly the work of the glacier in recent times. But we approach the Grimsel, and at the turning of the valley stand before the precipitous granite flank of the mountain. The traces of the ancient ice are here as plain as they are amazing. The rocks are so hard that not only the fluting and polishing, but even the fine scratches which date back unnamable thousands of years are as evident as if they had been made yesterday. We may trace these evidences to a height of two thousand feet above the present valley bed. It is indubitable that an ice-river of this astounding depth once flowed through the vale of Hasli.

365. Yonder is the summit of the Siedelhorn; and if we gain it, the Unteraar glacier will lie like a map below us. From this commanding point we plainly see marked upon the mountain sides the height to which the ancient ice extended. The ice-ground part of the mountains is clearly distinguished from the splintered crests which in those distant days rose above the surface of the glacier, and which must have then appeared as island peaks and crests in the midst of an ocean of ice.

366. We now scamper down the Siedelhorn, get once more into the valley of Hasli, along which we follow for more than twenty miles the traces of the ice. Fluted precipices, polished slabs, and beautifully-rounded granite domes. Right and left upon the mountain flanks, at great elevations, the evidences appear. We follow the footsteps of the glacier to the Lake of Brientz; and if we prolonged our enquiries, we should learn that all the lake beds of this region, at the time now referred to, bore the burden of immense masses of ice.

367. Instead of the vale of Hasli, we might take the valley of the Rhone. The traces of a mighty glacier, which formerly filled it, may be followed all the way to Martigny, which is 60 miles distant from the present ice. At Martigny the Rhone glacier was reinforced by another from Mont Blanc, and the welded masses moved onward, planing the mountains right and left, to the Lake of Geneva, the basin of which they entirely filled. Other evidences prove that the glacier did not end here, but pushed across the low country until it encountered the limestone barrier of the Jura Mountains.

[§ 54.] Erratic Blocks.

368. What are these other evidences? We have seen mighty rocks poised on the moraines of the Mer de Glace, and we now know that, unless they are split and shattered by the frost, these rocks will, at some distant day, be landed bodily by the Glacier des Bois in the valley of Chamouni. You have already learned that these boulders often reveal the mineralogical nature of the mountains among which the glacier has passed; that specimens are thus brought down of a character totally different from the rocks among which they are finally landed; this is strikingly the case with the erratic blocks stranded along the Jura.

369. For the Jura itself, as already stated, is limestone; there is no trace of native granite to be found amongst these hills. Still along the breast of the mountain above the town of Neufchâtel, and at about 800 feet above the lake of Neufchâtel, we find stranded a belt of granite boulders from Mont Blanc. And when we clear the soil away from the adjacent mountain side, we find upon the limestone rocks the scarrings of the ancient glacier which brought the boulders here.