106 ICE AND GLACIERS. 



in which pure ice is visible in the interior occur of all sizes ; in 

 the beginning they form slight cracks in which a knife can scarcely 

 be inserted ; becoming gradually enlarged to chasms, hundreds or 

 even thousands, of feet in length, and twenty, fifty, and as much 

 as a hundred feet in breadth, while some of them are immeasurably 

 deep. Their vertical dark blue walls of crystal ice, glistening 

 with moisture from the trickling water, form one of the most 

 splendid spectacles which nature can present to us ; but, at the 

 same time, a spectacle strongly impregnated with the excitement 

 of danger, and only enjoyable by the traveller who feels perfectly 

 free from the slightest tendency to giddiness. The tourist must 

 know how, with the aid of well-nailed shoes and a pointed 

 Alpenstock, to stand even on slippery ice, and at the edge of a 

 vertical precipice the foot of which is lost in the darkness of 

 night, and at an unknown depth. Such crevasses cannot always 

 be evaded in crossing the glacier ; at the lower part of the Mer 

 de Glace, for instance, where it is usually crossed by travellers, 

 we are compelled to travel along some extent of precipitous 

 banks of ice which are occasionally only four to six feet in breadth r 

 and on each side of which is such a blue abyss. Many a traveller, 

 who has crept along the steep rocky slopes without fear, there 

 feels his heart sink, and cannot turn his eyes from the yawning 

 chasm, for he must first carefully select every step for his feet. 

 And yet these blue chasms, which lie open and exposed in the 

 daylight, are by no means the worst dangers of the glacier ; 

 though, indeed we are so organised that a clanger which we 

 perceive, and which therefore we can safely avoid, frightens us 

 far more than one which we know to exist, but which is veiled 

 from our eyes. So also it is with glacier chasms. In the lower 

 part of the glacier they yawn before us, threatening death and 

 destruction, and lead us, timidly collecting all our presence of 

 mind, to shrink from them ; thus accidents seldom occur. On the 

 upper part of the glacier, on the contrary, the surface is covered 

 with snow j this, when it falls thickly, soon arches over the- 

 naiTower crevasses of a breadth of from four to eight feet, and 

 forms bi-idges which quite conceal the crevasse, so that the- 

 traveller only sees a beautiful plane snow surface before him. 



