SINGULAR HAILSTORM. 1856.
Meran was our next resting-place, whence we turned through the Schnalzerthal to Unserfrau, and thence over the Hochjoch to Fend. From a religious procession we took a guide, who, though partly intoxicated, did his duty well. Before reaching the summit of the pass we were assailed by a violent hailstorm, each hailstone being a frozen cone with a rounded end. Had not their motion through the air something to do with the shape of these hailstones? The theory of meteorites now generally accepted is that they are small planetary bodies drawn to the earth by gravity, and brought to incandescence by friction against the earth's atmosphere. Such a body moving through the atmosphere must have condensed hot air in front of it, and rarefied cool air behind it; and the same is true to a small extent of a hailstone. This distribution of temperature must, I imagine, have some influence on the shape of the stone. Possibly also the stratified appearance of some hailstones may be connected with this action.[A]
THE HOCHJOCH AND FEND. 1856.
The hail ceased and the heights above us cleared as we ascended. At the top of the pass we found ourselves on the verge of a great névé, which lay between two ranges of summits, sloping down to the base of each range from a high and rounded centre: a wilder glacier scene I have scarcely witnessed. Wishing to obtain a more perfect view of the region, I diverged from the track followed by Dr. Frankland and the guide, and climbed a ridge of snow about half a mile to the right of them. A glorious expanse was before me, stretching itself in vast undulations, and heaping itself here and there into mountainous cones, white and pure, with the deep blue heaven behind them. Here I had my first experience of hidden crevasses, and to my extreme astonishment once found myself in the jaws of a fissure of whose existence I had not the slightest notice. Such accidents have often occurred to me since, but the impression made by the first is likely to remain the strongest. It was dark when we reached the wretched Wirthshaus at Fend, where, badly fed, badly lodged, and disturbed by the noise of innumerable rats, we spent the night. Thus ended my brief glacier expedition of 1856; and on the observations then made, and on subsequent experiments, was founded a paper presented to the Royal Society by Mr. Huxley and myself.[B]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] I take the following account of a grander storm of the above character from Hooker's 'Himalayan Journals,' vol. ii. p. 405.
"On the 20th (March, 1849) we had a change in the weather: a violent storm from the south-west occurred at noon, with hail of a strange form, the stones being sections of hollow spheres, half an inch across and upwards, formed of cones with truncated apices and convex bases: these cones were aggregated together with their bases outwards. The large masses were followed by a shower of the separate conical pieces, and that by heavy rain. On the mountains this storm was most severe: the stones lay at Darjeeling for seven days, congealed into masses of ice several feet long and a foot thick in sheltered places: at Purneah, fifty miles south, stones one and two inches across fell, probably as whole spheres."
[B] 'Phil. Trans.' 1857, pp. 327-346.—L. C. T.