John Tyndall

“ Slowly and solemnly the pure white cone appeared to rise higher and higher into the sunlight, being afterwards mottled with gold and gloom, as clouds drifted between it and the sun. I descended alone towards the base of the mountain, making my way through a rugged gorge, the sides of which were strewn with pine-trees, splintered, broken across, and torn up by the roots. I finally reached the end of a glacier, formed by the snow and shattered ice which fall from the shoulders of the Jungfrau. ”

“ The sun and heaven were glorious, but the cold was nevertheless intense, for it had frozen bitterly the night before. The mountain seemed more noble and lovely than when I had last ascended it; and as I climbed the slopes, crossed the shining cols, and rounded the vast snow-bosses of the mountain, the sense of being alone lent a new interest to the glorious scene. I followed the track of those who preceded me, which was that pursued by Lauener and myself a week previously. Once I deviated from it to obtain a glimpse of Italy over the saddle which stretches from Monte Rosa to the Lyskamm. ”

“ On the 4th I rose early, and, strapping on my telescope, ascended to the Montanvert, where I engaged a youth to accompany me up the glacier. The heavens were clear and beautiful:—blue over the Aiguille du Dru, blue over the Jorasse and Mont Mallet, deep blue over the pinnacles of Charmoz, and the same splendid tint stretched grandly over the Col du Géant and its Aiguille. No trace of condensation appeared till towards eleven o'clock, when a little black balloon of cloud swung itself over the Aiguilles Rouges. ”

“ Forcing itself through the narrow gorge which holds the ice cascade in its jaws, and where it is greatly riven and dislocated, it spreads out in the valley below in such a manner as clearly to reveal to the mind's eye the nature of the forces to which it is subjected. Longfellow's figure is quite correct; the glacier resembles a vast gauntlet, of which the gorge represents the wrist; while the lower glacier, cleft by its fissures into finger-like ridges, is typified by the hand. ”

“ Our way lay for a time amid fine fissures with blue walls, until at length we reached the edge of one which elicited other sentiments than those of admiration. It must be crossed. At the opposite side was a high and steep bank of ice which prolonged itself downwards, and ended in a dependent eave of snow which quite overhung the chasm, and reached to within about a yard of our edge of the crevasse. ”

“ We made the Grimsel our station for a day, which was spent in examining the evidences of ancient glacier action in the valley of Hasli. Near the Hospice, but at the opposite side of the Aar, rises a mountain-wall of hard granite, on which the flutings and groovings are magnificently preserved. After a little practice the eye can trace with the utmost precision the line which marks the level of the ancient ice: above this the crags are sharp and rugged; while below it the mighty grinder has rubbed off the pinnacles of the rocks and worn their edges away. ”

“ As we looked from the heights, we could see that the valley through which our route lay was filled with gray fog: into this we soon plunged, and through it we made our way towards the Abschwung. The inclination of the glacier was our only guide, for we could see nothing. Reaching the confluence of the Finsteraar and Lauteraar branches, we went downwards with long swinging strides, close alongside the medial moraine of the trunk glacier. The glory of the morning had its check in the dull gloom of the evening. ”

“ In many places the space was merely covered by a thin crust, which, when trod upon, instantly yielded, and we sank with a shock sometimes to the hips. Our way next lay up a steep incline to the Grand Plateau, the depth and tenderness of the snow augmenting as we ascended. We had not yet seen the sun, but, as we attained the brow which forms the entrance to the Grand Plateau, he hung his disk upon a spike of rock to our left, and, surrounded by a glory of interference spectra of the most gorgeous colours, blazed down upon us. ”

“ The snow was hardened by the night's frost, and we were cheered by the hope of being able to accomplish the ascent with comparatively little labour. We were environed by an atmosphere of perfect purity; the larger stars hung like gems above us, and the moon, about half full, shone with wondrous radiance in the dark firmament. One star in particular, which lay eastward from the moon, suddenly made its appearance above one of the Aiguilles, and burned there with unspeakable splendour. ”

“ I had made the acquaintance of all accessible parts of the glacier, and spared no pains to master both the details and the meaning of the laminated structure of the ice, but I found no fact upon which I could take my stand and say to an advocate of an opposing theory, "This is unassailable." In experimental science we have usually the power of changing the conditions at pleasure; if Nature does not reply to a question we throw it into another form; a combining of conditions is, in fact, the essence of experiment. ”

“ The Görner Glacier, as we ascend it towards the old Weissthor, presents many fine examples of such crevasses; the ice being often torn in a most curious and irregular manner. You enter a porch, pillared by icicles, and look into a cavern in the very body of the glacier, encumbered with vast frozen bosses which are fringed all round by dependent icicles. At the peril of your life from slipping, or from the yielding of the stalactites, you may enter these caverns, and find yourself steeped in the blue illumination of the place. Their beauty is beyond description ”

“ Our way now lay along the face of a steep incline of snow, which was cut by the fissure we had just passed, in a direction parallel to our route. On the heights to our right, loose ice-crags seemed to totter, and we passed two tracks over which the frozen blocks had rushed some short time previously. We were glad to get out of the range of these terrible projectiles, and still more so to escape the vicinity of that ugly crevasse. To be killed in the open air would be a luxury, compared with having the life squeezed out of one in the horrible gloom of these chasms. ”

“ Proceeding along the mountain to the Furca, we found the valley at the further side of the pass also filled with fog, which rose, like a wall, high above the region of actual shadow. Once on turning a corner an exclamation of surprise burst simultaneously from my companion and myself. Before each of us and against the wall of fog, stood a spectral image of a man, of colossal dimensions; dark as a whole, but bounded by a coloured outline. ”

“ Indeed it is amusing to observe the indifference with which a snow-roof is often broken through, and a traveller immersed to the waist in the jaws of a fissure. The effort at recovery is instantaneous; half instinctively hands and knees are driven into the snow, and rescue is immediate. Fair glacier work was now before us; after which we reached the opposite mountain-slope, which we ascended, and then went down the flank of the Riffelberg to our hotel. ”

“ Near to us also grand castles of ice reared themselves, some erect, some overturned, with clear cut sides, striped by the courses of the annual snows, while high above the séracs of the plateau rose their still grander brothers of the Dôme du Goûter. There was a nobility in this glacier scene which I think I have never seen surpassed;—a [Pg 188] strength of nature, and yet a tenderness, which at once raised and purified the soul. The gush of the direct sunlight could add nothing to this heavenly beauty ”

“ I do not now speak of the heat reflected by the earth into space, as the light of the moon is to us; but of the heat which, after it has been absorbed by the earth, and has contributed to warm it, is radiated into space, as if the earth itself were its independent source. Thus we may properly say that the heat radiated from the earth is different in quality from that which the earth has received from the sun. ”

“ Does not all this sound more like a fairy [Pg 239] tale than the sober conclusions of science? What effort of the imagination could transcend the realities here presented to us? The ancients had their spheral melodies, but have not we ours, which only want a sense sufficiently refined to hear them? Immensity is filled with this music; wherever a star sheds its light its notes are heard. Our sun, for example, thrills concentric waves through space, and every luminous point that gems our skies is surrounded by a similar system. ”

“ To the right of Monte Rosa, and almost rivalling it in height, was the vast mass of the Lyskamm, a rough and craggy mountain, to whose ledges clings the snow which cannot grasp its steeper walls, sometimes leaning over them in impending precipices, which often break, and send wild avalanches into the space below. Between the Lyskamm and Monte Rosa lies a large wide valley into which both mountains pour their snows, forming there the Western glacier of Monte Rosa [A] —a noble ice stream, which from its magnitude and permanence deserves to impose its name upon the trunk glacier. ”

“ The lighter débris is scattered by the winds far and wide over the glacier, sullying the purity of its surface. Loose shingle rattles at intervals down the sides of the mountains, and falls upon the ice where it touches the rocks. Large rocks are continually let loose, which come jumping from ledge to ledge, the cohesion of some being proof against the shocks which they experience; while others, when they hit the rocks, burst like bomb-shells, and shower their fragments upon the ice. ”

“ DIRT-BANDS OF THE STRAHLECK BRANCH. 1858. These swept concentric with the protuberances across the glacier, and remained upon its surface even after the swellings had disappeared. The swifter flow of the centre of the glacier tends of course incessantly to lengthen the loops of the bands, and to thrust the summits of the curves which they form more and more in advance of their lateral portions. The depressions between the protuberances appeared to be furrowed by minor wrinkles, as if the ice of the depressions had yielded more than that of the protuberances. ”

“ As we descended the glacier from the Couvercle the sun was just disappearing, and the western heaven glowed with crimson, which crept gradually up the sky until finally it reached the zenith itself. Such intensity of colouring is exceedingly rare in the Alps; and this fact, together with the known variations in the intensity of the firmamental blue, justify the conclusion that the colouring must, in a great measure, be due to some variable constituent of the atmosphere. ”

“ I prefer such a slope to one on which the thought of danger cannot be entertained. I become more weary upon a dead level, or in walking up such a valley as that which stretches between Visp and Zermatt, than on a steep mountain side. The sense of weariness is often no index to the expenditure of muscular force: the muscles may be charged with force, and, if the nervous excitant be feeble, the strength lies dormant, and we are tired without exertion. ”

“ The eye is not perfectly achromatic, the colours of the rose and tulip are not pure colours, and the freshest air of our hills has a bit of poison in it. In like manner there is no such thing in nature as a body of perfectly homogeneous structure. I break this clay which seems so intimately mixed, and find that the fracture presents to my eyes innumerable surfaces along which it has given way, and it has yielded along these surfaces because in them the cohesion of the mass is less than elsewhere. ”

“ LIQUID MOTION ASCRIBED TO GLACIER.
"But this is not all," adds M. Rendu: "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. In currents of water the motion is not uniform, neither throughout their width nor throughout their depth; the friction of the bottom, that of the sides, the action of obstacles, cause the motion to vary, and only towards the middle of the surface is this entire...." ”

“ Another fact is perhaps worth notice: snow rarely lies so smooth as not to present little asperities at its surface; little ridges or hillocks, with little hollows between them. Such small hollows resemble, in some degree, the cavities which I made in the snow, and from them, in the present instance, a delicate light was sent to the eye, faintly tinted with the pure blue of the snow-crystals. In comparison with the spots thus illuminated, the little protuberances were gray. ”

“ Two years before, Bennen had been nearly blinded by inflammation brought on by the glare from the snow, and he now took unusual care in protecting his eyes. The rocks looking more practicable, we again made towards them, and clambered among them till a vertical precipice, which proved impossible of ascent, fronted us. Bennen scanned the obstacle closely as we slowly approached it, and finally descended to the snow, which wound at a steep angle round its base: on this the footing appeared to me to be singularly insecure, but I marched without hesitation or anxiety in the footsteps of my guide. ”