A Glacier Hunt 



71 



twelve years later and made the discovery that dur- 

 ing that time it had travelled a mile and a fifth, or 

 was about four thousand feet below the original site. 



In his ardour and enthusiasm for science Agassiz 

 was enabled to throw off the ordinary troubles of 

 life, but there were times when his inadequate means 

 cut like a knife and poverty seemed a band of steel 

 holding him back. We see glimpses of this in a 

 letter published by Ernest Favre in the Smithsonian 

 Report : 



" I am frightened at the approach of a new year, 

 the time for the settlement of accounts in Neu- 

 chatel, and I work like a madman to be able to meet 

 my indebtedness. If God preserves my health I 

 hope, after one or two years of continued labour, if I 

 moderate my expenses, and particularly if I abstain 

 from publishing anything more on my account, to 

 settle my affairs completely, but for the time I am 

 horribly cramped, I must say almost paralysed ; but 

 it is my own fault, and I must bear patiently the 

 consequences until I can succeed in getting myself 

 afloat again.'' My great regret in the present con- 

 dition of my affairs is that I am obliged to employ 

 a portion of my time with matters I ought not to 

 have neglected, and which occupy me now much 

 more than if I had always attended to them, and I 

 am obliged to retard some of the publications I 

 greatly desired to make next, but which it would be 

 imprudent for me to undertake at present, for I 

 should reproduce the embarrassment from which I 

 only just commence to be relieved if I did not conduct 

 all my enterprises with the utmost circumspection.'' 



