A like disappointment awaited me in my first attempt to ascertain by direct measurement the rate of motion in the glacier.  Early observers had asserted that the glacier moved, but there had been no accurate demonstration of the fact, and so uniform is its general appearance from year to year that even the fact of its motion was denied by many.  It is true that the progress of boulders had been watched; a mass of rock which had stood at a certain point on the glacier was found many feet below that point the following year; but the opponents of the theory insisted that it did not follow, because the mass of rock had moved, that therefore the mass of ice had moved with it.  They believed that the boulder might have slid down for that distance.  Neither did the occasional encroachment of the glaciers upon the valleys prove anything; it might he solely the effect of an unusual accumulation of snow in cold seasons.  Here, then, was another question to be tested; and one of my first experiments was to plant stakes in the ice to ascertain whether they would change their position with reference to the sides of the valley or not.  If the glacier moved, my stakes must of course move with it; if it was stationary, my stakes would remain standing where I had placed them, and any advance of other objects upon the surface of the glacier would be proved to be due to their sliding, or to some motion of their own, and not to that of the mass of ice on which they rested.  I found neither the one nor the other of my anticipated results; after a short time, all the stakes lay flat on the ice, and I learned nothing from my first series of experiments, except that the surface of the glacier is wasted annually for a depth of at least five feet, in consequence of which my rods had lost their support, and fallen down.  Similar disappointment was experienced by my friend Escher upon the great glacier of Aletsch.

My failure, however, taught me to sink the next set of stakes ten or fifteen feet below the surface of the ice, instead of five; and the experiment was attended with happier results.  A stake planted eighteen feet deep in the ice, and cut on a level with the surface of the glacier, in the summer of 1840, was found, on my return in the summer of 1841, to project seven feet, and in the beginning of September it showed ten feet above the surface.  Before leaving the glacier, in September, 1841, I planted six stakes at a certain distance from each other in a straight line across the upper part of the glacier, taking care to have the position of all the stakes determined with reference to certain fixed points on the rocky walls of the valley.  When I returned, the following year, all the stakes had advanced considerably, and the straight line had changed to a crescent, the central rods having moved forward much faster than those nearer the sides, so that not only was the advance of the glacier clearly demonstrated, but also the fact that its middle portion moved faster than its margins.