IN CLOUDS AND RIVERS, ICE AND GLACIERS. 



129 



and polishing, but even the fine scratches 

 '^hich date back unnamable thousands of 

 years are as evident as if they had been made 

 yesterday. We may trace these evidences to 

 a height of two thousand feet above the pres- 

 ent valley bed. It is indubitable that an 

 ice-river of this astounding depth once flowed 

 through the vale of Hasli. 



365. Yonder is the summit of the Siedel- 

 h rn ; and if we gain it the Unteraar glacier 

 \v :.'! lie like a map below us. From this 

 commanding point we plainly see marked 

 upon the mountain-sides the height to which 

 the ancient ice extended. The ice ground 

 pail of the mountains is clearly distinguished 

 from the splintered crests which in those dis- 

 tant clays rose above the surface of the glacier, 

 and which must have then appeared as island 

 peaks and crests in the midst of an ocean of 

 ice. 



366. We now scamper down the Siedelhora, 

 get once more into the valley of Hasli, along 

 which we follow for more than twenty miles 

 the traces of the ice. Fluted precipices, pol- 

 ished slabs, and beautifully-rounded granite 

 domes. Right and left upon the mountaiu 

 flanks, at great elevations, the evidences ap- 

 pear. We follow the footsteps of the glacier 

 to the Lake of Brientz ; and if we prolonged 

 our inquiries, we should learn that all the 

 lake beds of this region, at the tinia now re- 

 ferred to, bore the burden of immense masses 

 of ice. 



367. Instead of the vale of Hasli, we might 

 take the valley of the Rhone. The traces of 

 a mighty glacier, which formerly rillei it, 

 may be followed all the way to Martiguy, 

 which is 0(J miles distant from the present 

 ice. At Martigny the Rhone glacier was re- 

 inforce t by another from Mont Blanc, and 

 the welJed masses moved onward, planing 

 the mountains right and left, to the lake of 

 Geneva, the basin of which they entirely 

 Billed. Oilier evidences prove that the glacier 

 did not end hare, but pushed across the low 

 country until it encountered the limestone 

 barrier of the Jura Mountains. 



54. ERRATIC BLOCKS. 



368. What are these other evidences ? We 

 have seen mighty rocks poised on the mo- 

 raines of the Mer'de Glace, and we now know 

 that, unless they are split and shattered by 

 the frost, these' rocks will, at some distant 

 day, be landed bodily by the Glacier des Bois 

 in the valley of Chamouni. You have al- 

 ready learned that these boulders often reveal 

 the rnin era logical nature of the mountains 

 among which the glacier has passed ; that 

 specimens are thus brought clown of a char- 

 acter totally different from the rocks among 

 which they are finally landed ; this is striK- 

 ingly the case with the erratic block* strandeJ 

 along the Jura. 



361). For the Jura itself, as already stated, 

 ia limestone ; there is no trace of native 

 granite to be found among these hills. Still 

 along the breast of the mountain above the 

 town of Neufchatel, and at about 800 feet 

 above the lake of Neufchatel, we find 



stranded a belt of granite boulders from 

 Mont Blanc. And when we clear the soil 

 away from the adjacent mountain-side, we 

 find upon the limestone rocks the scarrings 

 of the ancient glacier which brought the 

 boulders here. 



370. The most famous of these rocks, 

 called the Pierre il Bot, measures 50 feet in 

 length, 40 in height, and 20 in width. Mul- 

 tiplying these three numbers together, we 

 obtain 40,000 cubic feet as the volume of the 

 boulder. 



371. But this is small compared to som 

 of the rocks which constitute the freight of 

 even recent glaciers. Let us visit another of 

 them. We have already been to Stalden, 

 where the valley divides into two branches, 

 the right branch running to St. Nicholas and 

 Zermatt, and the left one to Saas and the 

 Monte Moro. Three hours above f:iaas we 

 come upon the end of the Allelein glacier, 

 not filling the main valley, but thrown 

 athwart it so as to sto-p its drainage like a dam. 

 Above this ice-dam we have the Matt mark 

 Lake, and at the head of the lake a small inn 

 well known to travellers over the Monte Moro. 



372. Close to ihis inn is the greatest bould- 

 er that we have ever seen. It measures 

 240,000 cubic feet. Looking across the val- 

 ley we notice a glacier with its present end 

 half a mile from the boulder. The stone, I 

 believe, is serpentine, and were you and I to 

 explore the Schwartzberg glacier to its upper 

 fastnesses, we should find among them* the 

 birthplace of this gigantic stone. Four-and- 

 forty years ago, when the glacier reached the 

 place now occupied by the boulder, it landed 

 there its mighty freight, and then retreated. 

 There is a second ice-borne rock at hand, 

 which would be considered vast were it not 

 dwarfed by the aspect of its huger neighbor. 



373. Evidence of this kind might be multi. 

 plied to any extent. In fact, at this moment, 

 distinguished men, like Professor Favre of 

 Geneva, are determining from the distribu- 

 tion of the erratic blocks the extent of the 

 ancient glaciers of Switzerland. It was, 

 however, an engineer named Venctz that first 

 brought these evidences to light, and an- 

 nounced to an incredulous \vorld the vast 

 extension of the ancient ice. M. Agassiz 

 afterward developed and wonderfully ex- 

 panded the discovery. Pehaps the most in- 

 teresting observation regarding ancient gla- 

 ciers is that of Dr. Hooker, who, during a 

 recent visit to Palestine, found the celebrated 

 Cedars of Lebanon growing upon ancient 

 moraines. 



55. ANCIENT GLACIERS OF ENGLAND, 

 IRELAND. SCOTLAND, AND WALES. 



374. At the time the ice attained this extra- 

 ordinary development in the Alps, many 

 other portions of Europe, where no glaciers 

 now exist, were covered with then). In the 

 Highlands of Scotland, among the mount.uins 

 of England, Ireland, and Wales, the ancient 

 glaciers have written their story as plainly 

 as in the Alps themselves I should like te 

 wander with you through Borrodale in Cuia- 



