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GLACIERS. 159 



find clothed with forests, and with a luxuriant 

 growth of herbage, close up to the edge of the 

 ice. In the Alpine chain there are many instances 

 of glaciers which come down as low as the in- 

 habited districts. Thus several glaciers descend 

 into the vale of Chaniouni, quite to the bottom 

 of the valley ; and the end of the lower Grindel- 

 wald glacier in the Bernese Oberland lies only 

 three thousand feet above the sea. The end of 

 the glacier, however, is not quite a fixed point. 

 During a succession of cold summers it creeps 

 forward, in warm years again it retreats. Yet 

 these variations are inconsiderable compared with 

 the length of the glaciers, several of which, 

 through a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, 

 follow the windings of the valleys, receiving 

 branches here and there from side-valleys, and 

 thus, viewed at a distance from the mountain- 

 peaks, present exactly the appearance of broad 

 rivers with their tributary streams. When close 

 to them, however, you see mighty masses of ice 

 seldom arranged in regular layers, but commonly 

 cloven in every direction, and wedged one into 

 another, set with wild bristling peaks, and deeply 

 notched about their rugged sides. Here and 

 there you see the surface covered with sand, heaps 

 of earth, and blocks of stone, which, having fallen 

 from the mountain sides, are borne onwards by 

 the ice, and set down some at the sides, some not 



