The Beauties of Nature, and the Wonders of the World We Live In

by Sir John Lubbock

They are often very beautiful. "Mount Beerenberg," says Lord Dufferin, "in size, colour, and effect far surpassed anything I had anticipated. The glaciers were quite an unexpected element of beauty. Imagine a mighty river, of as great a volume as the Thames, started down the side of a mountain, bursting over every impediment, whirled into a thousand eddies, tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering cataracts of foam, then suddenly struck rigid by a power so instantaneous in its action that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened to the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of the contrast between the actual tranquillity of these silent crystal rivers and the violent descending energy impressed upon their exterior. You must remember too all this is upon a scale of such prodigious magnitude, that when we succeeded subsequently in approaching the spot—where with a leap like that of Niagara one of these glaciers plunges down into the sea—the eye, no longer able to take in its fluvial character, was content to rest in simple astonishment at what then appeared a lucent precipice of grey-green ice, rising to the height of several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel."[45]

The cliffs above glaciers shower down fragments of rock which gradually accumulate at the sides and at the end of the glaciers, forming mounds known as "moraines." Many ancient moraines occur far beyond the present region of glaciers.

In considering the condition of alpine valleys we must remember that the glaciers formerly descended much further than they do at present. The glaciers of the Rhone for instance occupied the whole of the Valais, filled the Lake of Geneva—or rather the site now occupied by that lake—and rose 2000 feet up the slopes of the Jura; the Upper Ticino, and contributory valleys, were occupied by another which filled the basin of the Lago Maggiore; a third occupied the valley of the Dora Baltea, and has left a moraine at Ivrea some twenty miles long, and which rises no less than 1500 feet above the present level of the river. The Scotch and Scandinavian valleys were similarly filled by rivers of ice, which indeed at one time covered the whole country with an immense sheet, as Greenland is at present. Enormous blocks of stone, the Pierre à Niton at Geneva and the Pierre à Bot above Neuchâtel, for instance, were carried by these glaciers for miles and miles; and many of the stones in the Norfolk cliffs were brought by ice from Norway (perhaps, however, by Icebergs), across what is now the German Ocean. Again wherever the rocks are hard enough to have withstood the weather, we find them polished and ground, just as, and even more so than, those at the ends and sides of existing glaciers.

The most magnificent glacier tracks in the Alps are, in Ruskin's opinion, those on the rocks of the great angle opposite Martigny; the most interesting those above the channel of the Trient between Valorsine and the valley of the Rhone.

In Great Britain I know no better illustration of ice action than is to be seen on the road leading down from Glen Quoich to Loch Hourn, one of the most striking examples of desolate and savage scenery in Scotland. Its name in Celtic is said to mean the Lake of Hell. All along the roadside are smoothed and polished hummocks of rock, most of them deeply furrowed with approximately parallel striæ, presenting a gentle slope on the upper end, and a steep side below, clearly showing the direction of the great ice flow.

Many of the upper Swiss valleys contain lakes, as, for instance, that of the Upper Rhone, the Lake of Geneva, of the Reuss, the Lake of Lucerne, of the Rhine, that of Constance. These lakes are generally very deep.

The colour of the upper rivers, which are white with the diluvium from the glaciers, is itself evidence of the erosive powers which they exercise. This finely-divided matter is, however, precipitated in the lakes, which, as well as the rivers issuing from them, are a beautiful rich blue.

"Is it not probable that this action of finely-divided matter may have some influence on the colour of some of the Swiss lakes—as that of Geneva for example? This lake is simply an expansion of the river Rhone, which rushes from the end of the Rhone glacier, as the Arveiron does from the end of the Mer de Glace. Numerous other streams join the Rhone right and left during its downward course; and these feeders, being almost wholly derived from glaciers, join the Rhone charged with the finer matter which these in their motion have ground from the rocks over which they have passed. But the glaciers must grind the mass beneath them to particles of all sizes, and I cannot help thinking that the finest of them must remain suspended in the lake throughout its entire length. Faraday has shown that a precipitate of gold may require months to sink to the bottom of a bottle not more than five inches high, and in all probability it would require ages of calm subsidence to bring all the particles which the Lake of Geneva contains to its bottom. It seems certainly worthy of examination whether such particles suspended in the water contribute to the production of that magnificent blue which has excited the admiration of all who have seen it under favourable circumstances."[46]

Among the Swiss mountains themselves each has its special character. Tyndall thus describes a view in the Alps, certainly one of the most beautiful—that, namely, from the summit of the Ægischhorn.