Pioneer Labourers 25 



very far indeed from being insignificant the force which 

 it exerts being simply irresistible. 



Water, as we have said, finds entrance everywhere, 

 more or less, in one way or another, and wherever it 

 is sufficiently near the surface to freeze, there it has the 

 effect of a multitude of crowbars and chisels of all sorts 

 and sizes wielded by an invisible army of workmen. It 

 widens every crack in which it is formed, prizing up 

 large masses of rock many tons in weight, loosening 

 and eventually forcing them off, and also doing finer 

 work, such as chiselling off splinters and particles of all 

 sizes, large and small. The immense piles of rubbish 

 which strew the surface of the glaciers, and consist of 

 sand, grit, and fragments of all dimensions, are due 

 mainly to the action of the frost, which in mountain 

 regions recurs not merely every winter, but every night 

 throughout the year. 



Even in England, where frosts are less frequent, as 

 well as less severe, and therefore penetrate to a less 

 depth, the tops of the higher hills are often buried 

 some feet deep with wreckage of the frost's making ; 

 only very often we fail to realize what is going on 

 because the loosened fragments are being constantly 

 washed away by the rain. In more severe climates the 

 waste is immense, the hill-tops and mountains being 

 crowded with great blocks and slabs wedged off by the 

 frost ; and this is the first step towards their being 

 crumbled into soil. The more water a rock absorbs, 

 the more easily, of course, it is cracked and splintered 

 by the frost ; and though we may not, many of us, have 

 much opportunity of observing the work done in this 

 way upon the rocks, we all know something of glasses 

 and pipes cracked by the freezing of the water in them* 



