CLOUDS AND RIVERS, ICE AND GLACIERS. 59 



Mps, who were thus made acquainted in a vague and 

 general way with the motion of the glaciers. 



§ 19. The Motion of Glaciers. Measurements by Hug. 

 and Agassiz. Drifting of Huts on the Ice. 



146. But the growth of knowledge is from vagueness 

 towards precision, and exact determinations of the rate 

 of glacier motion were soon desired. With refer- 

 ence to such measurements one glacier in the Bernese 

 Oberland will remain for ever memorable. From the 

 little town of Meyringen in Switzerland you proceed 

 up the valley of Hasli, past the celebrated waterfall of 

 Handeck, where the river Aar plunges into a chasm 

 more than 200 feet deep. You approach the Grimsel 

 Pass, but instead of crossing it you turn to the right and 

 follow the course of the Aar upwards. Like the Rhone 

 and the A^rveiron, you find the Aar issuing from a glacier. 



147. Get upon the ice, or rather upon the deep 

 moraine shingle which covers the ice, and walk upwards. 

 It is hard walking, but after some time you get clear 

 of the rubbish, and on to a wide glacier with a great 

 medial moraine running along its back. This moraine 

 is formed by the junction of two branch glaciers, the 

 Lauteraar and the Finsteraar, which unite at a pro- 

 montory called the Abschwung to form the trunk 

 glacier of the Unteraar. 



148. On this great medial moraine in 1827 an intrepid 



6 



