A Distorted and Crevassed Glacier.

Showing the rough texture of the surface of a Glacier below the Snow-line.

Many thousands of years ago there were glaciers in Scotland and England. We are certain of this, as glaciers scratch and polish the rocks they pass over as does nothing else. Stones are frozen into the ice, and it holds them and uses them as we might hold and use a sharply-pointed instrument, scratching the rock over which the mighty mass is slowly passing. In addition to the scratches, the ice polishes the rock till it is quite smooth, writing upon it in characters never to be effaced the history of past events. Another thing which proves to us that these icy rivers were in many places where there are no glaciers now, is the boulders we find scattered about. These boulders are sometimes of a kind of rock not found anywhere near, and so we know that they must have been carried along on that wonderful natural luggage-train, and dropped off it as it melted. We find big stones in North Wales which must have come on a glacier beginning in Scotland! Glacier-polished rocks are found along the whole of the west coast of Norway, and there are boulders near Geneva, in Switzerland, which have come from the chain of Mount Blanc, 60 miles away.

So you see that the glaciers of the Alps are far smaller than they were at one time, and that in many places where formerly there were huge glaciers, there are to-day none. The Ice Age was the time when these great glaciers existed, but the subject of the Ice Age is a difficult and thorny one, which is outside the scope of my information and of this book.

CHAPTER III
AVALANCHES

Many of the most terrible accidents in the Alps have been due to avalanches, and perhaps, as avalanches take place from different causes and have various characteristics, according to whether they are of ice, snow, or débris, some account of them may not be out of place.

We may briefly classify them as follows:—