Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 349 pages of information about Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland.

Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 349 pages of information about Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland.

As we stood on the ice at the entrance and peered into the comparative darkness, we saw by degrees that the glaciere consisted of a continuous sea of smooth ice, sloping down very gently towards the right hand.  The rock which forms the roof of the cave seemed to be almost as even as the floor, and was from 4 to 5 feet high in the neighbourhood in which we now found ourselves, gradually approaching the floor towards the bottom of the pit B, where it became about a foot high, and rising slightly in that part of the cave where the floor fell, so as to give 9 or 10 feet as the height there.  The ice had all the appearance of great depth; but there were no means of forming a trustworthy opinion on this point, beyond the fact that I succeeded in lowering a stone to a considerable depth, in the small crevice which existed between the wall and the block of ice which formed the floor.  The greatest length of the cave we found to be 112 ft. 7 in., and its breadth 94 ft., the general shape of the field of ice, which filled it to its utmost edges, being elliptical.  The surface was unpleasantly wet, chiefly in the line of the currents, which were now seen to pass backwards and forwards between the pits A and C. In the neighbourhood of the pit B the water stood in a very thin sheet on the ice, which there was level, and rendered the style of locomotion necessitated by the near approach of the roof extremely disagreeable, as I was obliged to lie on my face, and push myself along the wet and slippery ice, to explore that corner of the cave, being at length stopped by want of sufficient height for even that method of progression.

The circle marked D represents a column from the roof, at the foot of which we found a small grotto in the ice, which I entered to a depth of 6 feet, the surface of the field of ice showing a very gracefully rounded fall at the edges of the grotto.  At the point E there was a beautiful collection of fretted columns, white and hard as porcelain, arranged in a semicircle, with the diameter facing the cave, measuring 22 ft. 9 in. along this face.  On the farther side of these columns there were signs of a considerable fall in the ice; and by making use of the roots of small stalagmitic columns of that material, which grew on the slope of ice, I got down into a little wilderness of spires and flutings, and found a small cave penetrating a short way under the solid ice-floor.  G marks the place of a free stalagmite of ice, formed under a fissure in the roof; and each F represents a column from the roof, or from a lateral fissure in the wall.

The most striking features of this cave were the three domes, marked H in the ground-plan, in which they ought strictly not to appear, as being confined to the roof:  one of them is shown also in the vertical section of the cave.  They occur where the roof is from 3 to 4 feet above the floor.  It will be understood, that the bent attitude in which we were obliged to investigate these parts of the cave was

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Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.