268 Professor Agassiz on the Glacier Theory, 



from our hut one of these pits, which seemed well adapted 

 for our object ; it had an opening of eight feet in diameter, 

 and appeared to penetrate vertically to a great depth. I re- 

 solved to descend into it ; but to accomplish this it was neces- 

 sary to begin by turning off the stream by cutting another bed 

 for it in the ice. We set all hands to work, and when the new 

 bed was formed, I sent my men to procure the trepied, which 

 had been used for the boring operations, and placed it over 

 the pit. A board on which I was to sit was fixed at the end 

 of the rope, and I was secured to that rope by a strap, which 

 passed under my arms, so that my hands were left free. In 

 order to protect me from the water, which we were not able 

 to turn off completely, the guides covered my shoulders with 

 the skin of a goat, and placed on my head a cap made of a 

 marmot's skin. Thus accoutred I descended, provided with a 

 hammer and a staff. My friend Escher was to direct the de- 

 scent, and for this purpose he lay down on his face, with his 

 ear hanging over the side, in order the better to hear my di- 

 rections. It was agreed that so long as I did not ask to come 

 up, I should be allowed to descend as far as the distance at 

 which M. Escher could distinctly hear my voice. I reached 

 a depth of 80 feet without encountering any obstacle, observ- 

 ing attentively the lamellar structure of the glacier and the 

 small stalactites of ice of which I have already spoken, and 

 which were attached on all sides to the walls of the pit. These 

 stalactites were from 2 to 5 or 6 inches long, and only a few 

 lines in diameter ; and they were bent like hooks fixed in the 

 walls. It was evident that they were produced by an exuda- 

 tion from the walls of the pit ; for if they had resulted from the 

 water falling from the surface of the glacier, they would not 

 have been so uniform nor so equally distributed over the whole 

 surfiice of the sides. Those which were really derived from 

 the cascade of water from above were much larger, were more 

 closely united to the wall of ice, and were, moreover, limited to 

 one of the surfaces of the passage. The bands of blue ice 

 became perceptibly broader as I descended ; they were less 

 sharply marked than above, and the remainder of the mass, 

 of an inferior degree of whiteness, was less distinctly con- 

 trasted \^ith the intermediate deeper coloured laminae. At a 



