THE GLACIERS 33 



by the remains of snow avalanches. Creeping along 

 the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed 

 fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded 

 structure was beautifully revealed. The surface 

 snow, though sprinkled with stones shot down from 

 the cliffs, was in some places almost pure, grad 

 ually becoming crystalline and changing to whitish 

 porous ice of different shades of color, and this 

 again changing at a depth of 20 or 30 feet to blue 

 ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were 

 nearly pure, and blended with the paler bands in the 

 most gradual and delicate manner imaginable. A 

 series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way 

 down into the weird under-world of the crevasse. 

 Its chambered hollows were hung with a multitude 

 of clustered icicles, amid which pale, subdued light 

 pulsed and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. 

 Water dripped and tinkled overhead, and from far 

 below came strange, solemn murmur ings from cur 

 rents that were feeling their way through veins and 

 fissures in the dark. The chambers of a glacier are 

 perfectly enchanting, notwithstanding one feels out 

 of place in their frosty beauty. I was soon cold 

 in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall threatened 

 to engulf me ; yet it was hard to leave the delicious 

 music of the water and the lovely light. Coming 

 again to the surface, I noticed boulders of every 

 size on their journeys to the terminal moraine 

 journeys of more than a hundred years, without a 

 single stop, night or day, winter or summer. 



The sun gave birth to a network of sweet- voiced 

 rills that ran gracefully down the glacier, curling 

 and swirling in their shining channels, and cut- 



