A Glacier Hunt. 



73 



is so furious. Do you know what a gux is? I 

 think not ; and you are happy in your ignorance. I 

 can only say in regard to it that if the founders of 

 the various religions had known of the gux they 

 would not have imagined a hell for lost souls, but 

 would simply have sent them to the Finsteraarhorn^ 

 and secured for them a perpetual gux. ... It 

 takes hold of the limbs, dries the skin, renders the 

 imagination heavy and obtuse, prevents the exercise 

 of the culinary art. In the night of the 2ist to 

 22d it overturned our cabin, and we were obliged to 

 work until morning to restore it again. Imagine 

 how delightful it must have been to work in the 

 open air at a temperature two degrees below zero, 

 while a tempest was constantly blowing clouds of 

 pulverised ice in our faces.'' The open nature of 

 this hotel " can be imagined when it is known that 

 it afforded but poor protection against wind or rain ; 

 yet the party was a jolly one under all circumstances. 

 Burkhardt tells how the first man to awake in the 

 morning aroused the others by directing one of the 

 many streams that coursed down the wall, on the 

 faces of the sleepers. 



One of the first trips was to this cabin, which 

 they had found in 1839. 1^ had gone to pieces in its 

 voyage of four hundred feet during the winter. 



The great work of Agassiz, — Systeme Glaciaire^ 

 was one of the results of this series of exploits and 

 investigations. Count Pourtales was the meteorolo- 

 gist, Vogt the microscopist, Nicolet studied the flora 

 and rocks, Desor the moraines, and in this way a 

 vast number of facts were obtained. Guyot says in 



