"What is he going to do?" asked Rollo.
"He has got what we call an Alpine horn," said the guide; "and he is going to blow it for you, to let you hear the echoes."
So, when Mr. George and Rollo reached the place, the man blew into the end of his pole, which proved to be hollow, and it produced a very loud sound, like that of a trumpet. The sounds were echoed against the face of a mountain which was opposite to the place in a very remarkable manner. Mr. George paid the man a small sum of money, and then they went on.
Not long afterwards they came to another hut, which was situated opposite to a part of the mountain range where there was a great accumulation of ice and snow, that seemed to hang suspended, as it were, as if just ready to fall. A man stood at the door of this hut with a small iron cannon, which was mounted somewhat rudely on a block of wood, in his hand.
"What is he going to do with that cannon?" asked Rollo.
"He is going to fire it," said Henry, "to start down the avalanches from the mountain."
Henry here pointed to the face of the mountain opposite to where they were standing, and showed Rollo the immense masses of ice and snow that seemed to hang suspended there, ready to fall.
It is customary to amuse travellers in Switzerland with the story that the concussion produced by the discharge of a gun or a cannon will sometimes detach these masses, and thus hasten the fall of an avalanche; and though the experiment is always tried when travellers pass these places, I never yet heard of a case in which the effect was really produced. At any rate, in this instance,-though the man loaded his cannon heavily, and rammed the charge down well, and though the report was very loud and the echoes were extremely sharp and much prolonged,-there were no avalanches started by the concussion. Rollo and Mr. George watched the vast snow banks that overhung the cliffs with great interest for several minutes; but they all remained immovable.
So Mr. George paid the man a small sum of money, and then they went on.
After going on for an hour or two longer on this vast elevation, the path began gradually to descend into the valley of Grindelwald. The village of Grindelwald at length came into view, with the hundreds of cottages and hamlets that were scattered over the more fertile and cultivated region that surrounded it. The travellers could look down, also, upon the great glaciers of Grindelwald-two mighty streams of ice, half a mile wide and hundreds of feet deep, which come flowing very slowly down from the higher mountains, and terminate in icy precipices among the fields and orchards of the valley.[12] They determined to go and explore one of these glaciers the next day.
As they drew near to the village, the people of the scattered cottages came out continually, as they saw them coming, with various plans to get money from them. At one place two pretty little peasant girls, in the Grindelwald costume, came out with milk for them. One of the girls held the pitcher and the other a mug; and they gave Mr. George and Rollo good drinks.[13] At another house a boy came out with filberts to sell; and at another the merchandise consisted of crystals and other shining minerals which had been collected in the mountains near.
At one time Rollo saw before him three children standing in a row by the side of the road. They seemed to have something in their hands. When he reached the place, he found that they had for sale some very cunning little Swiss cottages carved in wood. These carvings were extremely small and very pretty. Each one was put in a small box for safe transportation. In some cases the children had nothing to sell, and they simply held out their hands to beg as the travellers went by; and there were several lame persons, and idiots, and blind persons, and other objects of misery that occasionally appeared imploring charity. As, however, these unfortunates were generally satisfied with an exceedingly small donation, it did not cost much to make them all look very happy. There is a Swiss coin, of the value of a fifth part of a cent, which was generally enough to give; so that, for a New York shilling, Rollo found he could make more than sixty donations-which was certainly very cheap charity.
"In fact," said Rollo, "it is so cheap that I would rather give them the money than not."
At length the party arrived safely at Grindelwald and put up at an excellent inn, with windows looking out upon the glaciers. The next day they went to see the glaciers; and on the day following they returned to Interlachen.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: Flowers dry faster and better between sheets of blotting paper than between those of common printing paper, such as is used for books; for the surface of this latter is covered with a sort of sizing used in the manufacture of it, and which prevents the moisture of the plant from entering into the paper.]
[Footnote 11: See map.]
[Footnote 12: It may seem strange that streams of ice, hundreds of feet thick and solid to the bottom, can flow; but such is the fact, as will appear more fully in the next chapter.]
[Footnote 13: See frontispiece.]
CHAPTER XI. GLACIERS.
A glacier, when really understood, is one of the most astonishing and impressive spectacles which the whole face of Nature exhibits. Mr. George and Rollo explored quite a number of them in the course of their travels in Switzerland; and Rollo would have liked to have explored a great many more.
[Illustration: THE CREVASSE.]
A glacier is a river of ice,-really and truly a river of ice,-sometimes two or three miles wide, and fifteen or twenty miles long, with many branches coming into it. Its bed is a steep valley, commencing far up among the mountains in a region of everlasting ice and snow, and ending in some warm and pleasant valley far below, where the warm sun beats upon the terminus of it and melts the ice away as fast as it comes down. It flows very slowly, not usually more than an inch in an hour. The warm summer sun beams upon the upper surface of it, melting it slowly away, and forming vast fissures and clefts in it, down which you can look to the bottom, if you only have courage to go near enough to the slippery edge. If you do not dare to do this, you can get a large stone and throw it in; and then, if you stand still and listen, you hear it thumping and thundering against the sides of the crevasse until it gets too deep to be any longer heard. You cannot hear it strike the bottom; for it is sometimes seven or eight hundred feet through the thickness of the glacier to the ground below.
The surface of the glacier above is not smooth and glassy like the ice of a freshly-frozen river or pond; but is white, like a field of snow. This appearance is produced in part by the snow which falls upon the glacier, and in part by the melting of the surface of the ice by the sun. From this latter cause, too, the surface of the glacier is covered, in a summer's day, with streams of water, which flow, like little brooks, in long and winding channels which they themselves have worn, until at length they reach some fissure, or crevasse, into which they fall and disappear. The waters of these brooks-many thousands in all-form a large stream, which flows along on the surface of the ground under the glacier, and comes out at last, in a wild, and roaring, and turbid torrent, from an immense archway in the ice at the lower end, where the glacier terminates among the green fields and blooming flowers of the lower valley.
The glaciers are formed from the avalanches which fall into the upper valleys in cases where the valleys are so deep and narrow and so secluded from the sun that the snows which slide into them cannot melt. In such case, the immense accumulations which gather there harden and solidify, and become ice; and, what is very astonishing, the whole mass, solid as it is, moves slowly onward down the valley, following all the turns and indentations of its bed, until finally it comes down into the warm regions of the lower valleys, where the end of it is melted away by the sun as fast as the mass behind crowds it forward. It is certainly very astonishing that a substance so solid as ice can flow in this way, along a rocky and tortuous bed, as if it were semi-fluid; and it was a long time before men would believe that such a thing could be possible. It was, however, at length proved beyond all question that this motion exists; and the rate of it in different glaciers at different periods of the day or of the year has been accurately measured.