“It looks like a gigantic natural colosseum,” said Lou. “The head wall is curved just like the pictures of the Colosseum in our Roman history.”
“Right-o,” cried Peanut. “Say, what a place to stage a gladiator fight, eh? Sit your audience all up on the debris at the bottoms of the cliffs.”
“And have your gladiators come out from under the snow arch,” laughed Mr. Rogers.
“Sure,” said Peanut.
They now came to the snow arch, which is formed every June under the head wall, and sometimes lasts as late as August. The winter storms, from the northwest, blow the snow over Bigelow Lawn above, and pack it down into Tuckerman’s Ravine, in a huge drift two hundred feet deep. This drift gradually melts down, packs into something pretty close to ice, and the water trickling from the cliff behind joins into a brook beneath it and hollows out an arch.
The Scouts now stood before the drift. It was perhaps eight or ten feet deep at the front now, and a good deal deeper at the back. It was something like three hundred feet wide, they reckoned, and extended out from the cliff from sixty to a hundred feet. The arch was about in the centre, and the brook was flowing out from beneath it.
“Look!” cried Art, “a few rods down-stream the alders are all in leaf, nearer they are just coming out, and here by the edge they are hardly budded!”
“That’s right,” said Lou. “I suppose as the ice melts back, spring comes to ’em.”
Rob put his hand in the brook. “Gee, I don’t blame ’em,” he said; “it’s free ice water, all right.”
“Come on into the ice cave,” Peanut exclaimed, starting forward.