CHAPTER VI 



THE GORGE OF THE AAR AND ITS TEACHINGS 



There is perhaps no valley in Switzerland that offers 

 to the tourist so much variety and grandeur, and to the 

 glacialist so much instruction, as the Haslithal or valley 

 of the Aar. I visited it for the first time last summer, 

 walking over the Grimsel Pass to the Hospice and the 

 Aar glacier, and thence along the old male-track and fine 

 new carriage-road to Meiringen ; staying there three days 

 to visit the Reichenbach Falls, the Kirchet Hill, the 

 gorge of the Aar, and other interesting localities. It 

 seemed to me at the time that the phenomena presented 

 by this valley afforded a striking example of the vast 

 amount of glacial erosion, and that some of the conclu- 

 sions to which they point had been overlooked by English 

 writers. They give us, in fact, a fresh and very powerful 

 argument in support of the power of the ancient glaciers 

 both to deepen valleys and to grind out lake-basins ; and 

 I now propose to lay before my readers the facts which 

 seem to me to prove the correctness of this view. 



The Grimsel Pass is a low one, only a little over 7,000 

 feet, but for this reason, and because it lies directly 

 between extensive areas of perpetual snow, which give 

 rise to some of the finest glaciers in Switzerland, it has 

 been very largely ice-ground and presents a scene of 

 savage grandeur which is often absent from higher passes. 

 Everywhere the rocks are ground into huge domes or 

 smooth slopes or rounded hollows, and these ice-ground 



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