l36 THE FORMS OF WATER JN 



§ 50. The jffiggischkorn, the Margelin See and its 



Icebergs. 



346. I am, however, unwilling that you should quit 

 Switzerland without seeing such icebergs as it can show, 

 and indeed there are other still nobler glaciers than the 

 Mer de Glace with which you ought to be acquainted. 

 In tracing the Rhone to its source, you have already 

 ascended the valley of the Rhone. Let us visit it again 

 together; halt at the little town of Viesch, and go from 

 it straight up to the excellent hostelry on the slope of 

 the iEggischhorn. This we shall make our head-quarters 

 while we explore that monarch of European ice-streams, 

 — the great Aletsch glacier. 



347. Including the longest of its branches, this noble 

 ice-river is about twenty miles long, while at the middle 

 of its trunk it measures nearly a mile and a quarter from 

 side to side. The grandest mountains of the Bernese 

 Oberland, the Jungfrau, the Monch, the Trugberg, the 

 Aletschhorn, the Breithorn, the Gletscherhorn, and 

 many another noble peak and ridge, are the collectors 

 of its neves. From three great valleys formed in the 

 heart of the mountains these neves are poured, uniting 

 together to form the trunk of the Aletsch at a place 

 named by a witty mountaineer, the ' Place de la Concorde 

 of Nature.' It tt^ phrase be meant to convey the ideas 

 of tranquil grander r, beauty of form, and purity of hue, 

 »t is well bestowed. 



