SUITE DE l'^TDDE, ETC., BY CEZANNE. 109 



"In the cutting from whicli has been obtained the material for the 

 embankment on which stands the railway station have been found, with 

 their Qharacteristic fossils, limestones conveyed jindamaged from the Cirque 

 of Gt^vamie, and, side by side with these, blocks torn from the granite 

 summits of Cauterets. The scientific explorers cited have given with their 

 memoir a longitudinal profile of the glacier, and a chart of the terminal 

 moraine. 



" ' In studying,' say they, ' the traces which the glacier,has left upon the 

 soil, we have seen, that it comported itself as do all the glaciers known ; it 

 transported materials of great bulk, and at the same time minute debris, 



^ which ,we ;find in the fonpn of moraines exactly in the plape which is assigned 

 to them by the accepted laws of the movement of translation of glaciers, 



; and taking in these an, arrangement or disposition which excludes every 

 thought of pth^r mode of natural transport, 



, " ' At the same time the glacier has polished and scratched the resisting 

 rocks with which it was in contact,' (and it should be admitted that with 



.the ;thickness given above [I am quoting M. .Cezanne] that the rubbing and 

 option of the glacier, with a pressure approaching to 1000 tons per square 

 mfetre, prolonged throughout some hundreds of ages, would suffice to 

 account for the erosion of a valley many hundreds of metres in depth). 

 ' Then, in the third place, the mud produced by the continual friction of the 

 ice against the rock, finally ejected by the waters produced by the melting 

 of the glacier, and by the glacial torrents, have contributed to form the 

 principal material of that loess which covers the place far beyond the 

 p6rimitre of the ancient glacier.' 



" One might, were it not necessary to avoid repetitions, give proof as 

 demonstrative in regard to the cone of the Neste which forms the plateau 

 de Lannemezan. This plateau is a vast deposit of Icess brought out from 

 the valleys of the Neste ; but a noteworthy circumstance is, the less 

 important of these two- valleys, that of the Neste, has supplied the 

 uppermost dejections ; its cone has partially covered up that of the 

 Garonne, and the great river has been turned out of its course by its 

 affluent. All the strange windings of the Garonne, and of Saint-Bertrand 

 de Comminges at Montrdjeau, explain themselves at once on the spot 

 by the strongly characterised moraines which the Luchon railway has 

 exposed. 



" Much less ramified are the other valleys of the Pyrenees — those, for 

 instance of the Nivelle, of the Nioi, and of the Joyeuse ; those of the Gaves, 

 of Maul6an, of Aspe, and of Ossau — that more especially of the Ariege — des- 

 cending from less elevated summits, have had their glaciers and their 

 torrential dfebicles proportionate to the local circumstances." 



These . are but specimens of numerous details given, most of them with 

 measurements and other indications of precision such as science demands, 

 of the district thus traversed, of the districts beyond, of the Alps, of the 

 basin of the Ehone and its affluents, with references to what is to be seen 

 in the basins of the Po, the Danube, and the Khine, — producing an 

 impression that the whole of these districts, together with much of the 

 intermediate region, is covered with torrential deposits of a magnitude 

 and extent far surpassing those of any which the engineer of modem 

 , times is called to treat — reminding one of the statement, "There were 

 giants in those days." 



