The angle occupied by the cascade or column was the most striking.  The base of the column was large, and apparently solid, like a smooth unbroken waterfall suddenly frozen.  It fitted into the angle of the cave, and completely filled up the space between the contiguous walls.  I commenced to chop with my axe, and before long found that this ice was hollow, though very thick; and when a sufficient hole was made for me to get through, I saw that what had looked like a column was in truth only a curtain of ice hung across the angle of the cave.  Within the curtain the ice-floor still went on, streaming down at last into a fissure something like that in the other corner.  The curtain was so low, that I was obliged to sit on the ice inside to explore; and after a foot or two of progress, the slope towards the fissure became sufficiently great to require steps to be cut.  The stream of ice turned round a bend in the fissure, very near the curtain, and was lost to view; but Rosset stood by the hole through which I had passed—­on the safer side of it—­and despatched blocks of ice, which glided past me round the corner, and went whizzing on for a long time, eventually landing upon stones, and sometimes, we fancied, in water.  It is very awkward work, sitting on a gentle slope of the smoothest possible ice, with a candle in one hand, and an axe in the other, cutting each step in front; especially when there is nothing whatever to hold by, and the slope is sufficient to make it morally certain that in case of a slip all must go together.  Of course, a rope would have made all safe.  When I groaned over the maire’s obstinacy, Rosset asked what could possibly be the use of a rope, if I were to slip; and, to my surprise, I found that he had no idea what I wanted a rope for.  When he learned that, had there been one, he would have played a large part in the adventure, and that he might have had me dangling over an ice-fall out of sight round the corner, he added his groans to mine, and would evidently have enjoyed it all very much.  At the same time, he was prudent, and, as each block of ice made its final plunge, he told me that was what would happen to me if I went any farther:  and, really, the pictures he drew of deep lakes of icy water and jagged points of rock, between which I must make my choice down there, were so unpleasant, that at last I desisted, and pushed myself up backwards, still in a sitting posture, calling Rosset and the maire the worst names I could feel justified in using.  On the way, I found one of the large brown flies which we had seen in the Glaciere of La Genolliere, and in the Lower Glaciere of the Pre de S. Livres.