It has often been a matter for speculation as to whether the chamois will ever become extinct in this country. I cannot think it likely that it will. It is carefully preserved in the closed districts, and as the wild valleys of the Alps are more and more opened up, poaching will become more difficult and the animals consequently freer from molestation. The more, too, that habitations increase in the higher valleys, the wilder will the chamois probably become, and the more difficult, therefore, to shoot; so that I do not think that we need fear the dying out of the race.
CHAPTER VIII. ON GLACIERS.
The Alpine Journal for November 1868 concludes with these words, “If anybody thinks that Alpine science has been already too thoroughly drilled into the public mind, we would refer him to a recent ridiculous letter which the editor of the Times did not think it beneath him to publish, and in which the writer said that a ‘puff of smoke,’ as it appeared on the mountain, ‘raised the cry that the Glacier des Pélérins had burst, carrying with it part of the moraine which kept it within bounds!’”
If any one had told the climbing world in those days that in 1891 the ordinary traveller would be nearly as ignorant of the behaviour of glaciers as was the Times correspondent referred to above, I fancy the prophet would have been received with derision. Such, however, I know to be the case; and only last year, while walking up Piz Languard with a party of friends, I was asked if the medial moraine of the Morteratsch glacier was a carriage road or only a bridle-path! This is my excuse for entering at some length into a subject which has been already written about in so able a manner and in much detail by Professors Tyndall, Forbes, Heim, Forel, and others.
Now, let me tell you something about those great icy masses which, under the name of glaciers, thrust their cold forms far below the region of perpetual snow, and in some cases, as, for instance, that of the Glacier des Bossons at Chamonix, even push down their frozen waves amongst the meadows and forests in the very trough of the valley.
I am constantly asked by those who are only acquainted with the lower end of the glaciers how it is that they are continually and rapidly melting at their lower extremity, and yet their general features are but slightly altered from year to year. The obvious answer is, that they are constantly replenished from above, and that glacier ice has formerly been snow, which, for a considerable period, has been subjected to enormous pressure. The common illustration of a snow-ball, squeezed in the hand till it becomes hard and icy, explains this transition of snow to ice in a manner easily understood by all, and if we remember that the warm hand, in addition to the pressure, also tends to produce the above result, we have a parallel to the heat of the sun acting on the cold, dry snow of the upper regions. Now, every one knows that when it rains in the valleys it snows on the mountains, and that even during the heat of summer it very seldom rains above a height of 11,000 to 12,000 feet. In consequence of this, the accumulation of snow on the higher peaks is very great, and the pressure which is exerted by its weight is enormous.
As a natural result, a portion of the ice-caps or snow-beds gravitates downwards, and where the upper snows are of great extent and the shape of the channel suitable, a large glacier is found, as is the case near Pontresina, where the huge Morteratsch glacier pursues its lengthy course, fed by the snows of the Bernina and Bellavista. The first to speak clearly and positively on the since well-proven theory that a glacier moves like a river was Monseigneur Rendu, a native of Savoy. “Between the Mer de Glace and a river there is a resemblance so complete, that it is impossible to find in the latter a circumstance which does not exist in the former,” he writes, and Professor Tyndall sets forth in an admirable manner the reason why a glacier moves more quickly in the centre than at the sides. I cannot do better than quote his own words.
“A cork, when cast upon a stream near its centre, will move more quickly than when thrown near the side, for the progress of the stream is retarded by its banks. As you and your guide stood together on the solid waves of that Amazon of ice, you were borne resistlessly along. You saw the boulders perched upon their frozen pedestals; these were the spoils of distant hills, quarried from summits far away, and floated to lower levels like timber blocks upon the Rhone. As you advanced towards the centre you were carried down the valley with an ever-augmenting velocity. You felt it not—he felt it not—still you were borne down with a velocity which, if continued, would amount to 1000 feet a year.”