THE FORMS OF WATER 



indeed, in 1865, a fifth good man met his ena, 

 and he also lies beside his fellow-countrymen 

 ia the churchyard of Zermatt. Passing a 

 little tarn, or lake, called the Riffel See, we 

 assail the Riffelhorn on its upper side. It is 

 capital rock-practice to reach the summit; 

 and from it we command a most extraordi- 

 nary scene. 



357. The huge and many-peaked mass of 

 Monte Rosa faces us, and we scan its snows 

 fn/m bottom to top. To the right is the 

 mighty ridge of the Lyskamm, also laden 

 with snow ; and between both lies the West- 

 ertt G-lacier of Monte Rosa. This glacier 

 meets another from the vast snow-fields of 

 the Oima di Jazzi ; they join to form the 

 Gorner glacier, and from their place of junc- 

 tion stretches the customary medial moraine. 

 On this side of the Lyskamm rise two beau- 

 tiful snowy eminences, the Twins Castor and 

 Pollux ; then come the brown crags of the 

 Brei thorn, then the Little :viatteihorn, and 

 then the broad snow-field of trie Theodule, 

 out of which cp rings the Great Matterhorn, 

 and which you and I will cross subsequently 

 into Italy. 



o->3. The valleys and depressions between 

 these mountains are filled with glaciers. 

 D )wn the flunks 01 the Twin Castor comes 

 the Glacier des Jumeaux, from Pollux comes 

 the Schwartze glacier, from the Breithorn 

 the Trifti glacier, then come the Little Mat- 

 terhorn glacier and the Theodule glacier, 

 each, as it welds itself to the trunk, carrying 

 with it its medial moraine. We can count 

 nine such moraines from our present posi- 

 tion. And to a still more surprising degree 

 than on the Mer de Glace, we notice Hie 

 power of the ice to yield to pressure ; the 

 broad neves being squeezed on the trunk of 

 the Goraer into white stripes, which become 

 ever narrower net ween their bounding mo- 

 raines, and finally disappear under their own 

 shingle. 



859. On the two main tributaries we also 

 notice moraines which seem in each case to 

 rise from the body of the glacier, appearing 

 in the middle of the ice without any apparent 

 origin higher up. These at their sources 

 are sub-glacial moraines, which have b^cn 

 rubbed away from rocky promontories en- 

 tirely covered with ice. They lie hidden for 

 a time in the body of the glacier, and appear 

 at the surface where the ice above them has 

 been melted away by the sun. 



SCO. This is the place to mention a notion 

 long entertained by the inhabitants of the 

 high Alps, that glaciers possess the power of 

 thrusting out all impurities from them. On 

 the Mer de Glace you and I have noticed 

 iargxi patches of clay and black mud which 

 evidently came from the body of the glacier, 

 and we can therefore understand how natural 

 was this notion of extrusion to people unac- 

 customed to close observation. But the 

 power of the glacier in this respect is in 

 reality the power of the sun, which fuses the 

 ice above concealed impurities, and, hke the 

 bodies of the guides on the Glacier des Bos- 

 sons (143) brings them to the light of dav 



361. On no other glacier will you find more 

 objects of interest than on the Gorner. Sand 

 cones, glacier-tables, deep ice-gorges cut by 

 streams and bridged fantastically by bould- 

 ers, moulins, sometimes arched ice-caverns 

 of extraordinary size and beauty. On the 

 lower part of the glacier we notice the par- 

 tial disappearance of the medial moraine in 

 the crevasses, ami its reappearance at the foot 

 of the incline. For many years this glacier 

 was steadily advancing on the meadow in 

 front of it, ploughing up the soil and over- 

 turning the chalets in its way. It now shares 

 in the general reticat exhibited during the 

 last fifteen years among the glaciers of the 

 Alps. As usual, a river, the Visp, rushes 

 from a vault at the extremity of the Gorner 

 glacier. 



53. ANCIENT GLACIERS OP SWITZERLAND, 



362. You have not lost the memory of the 

 old moraine, which interested us so much in 

 our first ascent from the source of Ihe Arvei- 

 ron ; for it opened our minds to the fact that 

 at one period of its history the Mer de Glace 

 attained far greater dimensions than it now 

 exhibits. Our experience since that time 

 has enabled us to pursue these evidences of 

 ice action to an extent of which we had tiiea 

 no notion. 



363. Close to the existing glacier, for ex- 

 ample, we have repeatedly seen the mountain- 

 side laid bare by the retreat of the ice. This 

 is especially conspicuous just now, because 

 for the last fifteen or sixteen years the glaciers 

 of the Alps have been steadily shrinking ; so 

 that it is no uncommon thing to see the mar- 

 ginal rocks laid bare for a height of fifty, 

 sixty, eighty, or even one hundred feet above 

 the present glacier. On the rocks thus ex- 

 posed we see the evident marks of the slid- 

 ing ; and our e} 7 es and minds have been so 

 educated in the observation of these appear- 

 ances that we are now able to detect, with 

 certainty, icemarks, or moraines, ancient or 

 modern, wherever they appear. 



364. But the elevations at which we have 

 found such evidence might well shake be-lief 

 in the conclusions to which they point. 

 Beside the Massa Goige, at 1000 feet above 

 the present Aletsch, we found a great old 

 moraine. Descending the meadows between 

 the Be! Alp and Plat ten, we found another, 

 now clothed with grass, and bearing a village 

 on its back. But I wish to carry you to a 

 region which exhibits these evidences on a 

 still grander and more impressive scale. We 

 have already taken a brief flight to the valley 

 of Hasli and the Glacier of the Aar. Let us 

 make that glacier our starting-point. Walk- 

 irg from it downward toward the Grimsel, 

 we pass everywhere over rocks singularly 

 rounded, an 1 fluted, and scarred. These 

 appearances are manifestly the work of the 

 glacier in recent times. But we approach the 

 Grimsel, and at the turning of the valley 

 stand before the precipitous granite flank of 

 the mountain. The traces of the ancient ice 

 are here as plain as they are amazing. The 

 rocks are so hard that not only the fluting 



