The Glaciers of the Alps. John Tyndall
and reach Graun that evening. After a rough ascent over the alp we came to the dead crag, where the weather had broken up the mountains into ruinous heaps of rock and shingle. We reached the end of a glacier, the ice of which was covered by sloppy snow, and at some distance up it came upon an islet of stones and débris, where we paused to rest ourselves. My guide, as usual, ranged over the summits with his telescope, and at length exclaimed, "I see a chamois." The creature stood upon a cliff some hundreds of yards to our left, and seemed to watch our movements. It was a most graceful animal, and its life and beauty stood out in forcible antithesis to the surrounding savagery and death.
On the steep slopes of the glacier I was assisted by the hand of my guide. In fact, on this day I deemed places dangerous, and dreaded them as such, which subsequent practice enabled me to regard with perfect indifference; so much does what we call courage depend upon habit, or on the fact of knowing that we have really nothing to fear. Doubtless there are times when a climber has to make up his mind for very unpleasant possibilities, and even gather calmness from the contemplation of the worst; but in most cases I should say that his courage is derived from the latent feeling that the chances of safety are immensely in his favour.
PASSAGE OF A JOCH. 1856.
After a tough struggle we reached the narrow row of crags which form the crest of the pass, and looked into the world of mountain and cloud on the other side. The scene was one of stern grandeur—the misty lights and deep cloud-glooms being so disposed as to augment the impression of vastness which the scene conveyed. The breeze at the summit was exceedingly keen, but it gave our muscles tone, and we sprang swiftly downward through the yielding débris which here overlies the mountain, and in which we sometimes sank to the knees. Lower down we came once more upon the ice. The glacier had at one place melted away from its bounding cliff, which rose vertically to our right, while a wall of ice 60 or 80 feet high was on our left. Between the two was a narrow passage, the floor of which was snow, which I knew to be hollow beneath: my companion, however, was in advance of me, and he being the heavier man, where he trod I followed without hesitation. On turning an angle of the rock I noticed an expression of concern upon his countenance, and he muttered audibly, "I did not expect this." The snow-floor had, in fact, given way, and exposed to view a clear green lake, one boundary of which was a sheer precipice of rock, and the other the aforesaid wall of ice; the latter, however, curved a little at its base, so as to form a short steep slope which overhung the water. My guide first tried the slope alone; biting the ice with his shoe-nails, and holding on by the spike of his bâton, he reached the other side. He then returned, and, divesting myself of all superfluous clothes, as a preparation for the plunge which I fully expected, I also passed in safety. Probably the consciousness that I had water to fall into instead of pure space, enabled me to get across without anxiety or mischance; but had I, like my guide, been unable to swim, my feelings would have been far different.
This accomplished, we went swiftly down the valley, and the more I saw of my guide the more I liked him. He might, if he wished, have made his day's journey shorter by stopping before he reached Graun, but he would not do so. Every word he said to me regarding distances was true, and there was not the slightest desire shown to magnify his own labour. I learnt by mere accident that the day's work had cut up his feet, but his cheerfulness and energy did not bate a jot till he had landed me in the Black Eagle at Graun. Next morning he came to my room, and said that he felt sufficiently refreshed to return home. I paid him what I owed him, when he took my hand, and, silently bending down his head, kissed it; then, standing erect, he stretched forth his right hand, which I grasped firmly in mine, and bade him farewell; and thus I parted from Johann Auer, my brave and truthful chamois-hunter.
On the following day I met Dr. Frankland in the Finstermuntz pass, and that night we bivouacked together at Mals. Heavy rain fell throughout the night, but it came from a region high above that of liquidity. It was first snow, which, as it descended through the warmer strata of the atmosphere, was reduced to water. Overhead, in the air, might be traced a surface, below which the precipitate was liquid, above which it was solid; and this surface, intersecting the mountains which surround Mals, marked upon them a beautifully-defined snow-line, below which the pines were dark and the pastures green, but above which pines and pastures and crags were covered with the freshly-fallen snow.
THE STELVIO. 1856.
On the 2nd of September we crossed the Stelvio. The brown cone of the well-known Madatschspitze was clear, but the higher summits were clouded, and the fragments of sunshine which reached the lower world wandered like gleams of fluorescent light over the glaciers. COLOUR OF FRESH SNOW. 1856. Near the snow-line the partial melting of the snow had rendered it coarsely granular, but as we ascended it became finer, and the light emitted from its cracks and cavities a pure and deep blue. When a staff was driven into the snow low down the mountain, the colour of the light in the orifice was scarcely sensibly blue, but higher up this increased in a wonderful degree, and at the summit the effect was marvellous. I struck my staff into the snow, and turned it round and round; the surrounding snow cracked repeatedly, and flashes of blue light issued from the fissures. The fragments of snow that adhered to the staff were, by contrast, of a beautiful pink yellow, so that, on moving the staff with such fragments attached to it up and down, it was difficult to resist the impression that a pink flame was ascending and descending in the hole. As we went down the other side of the pass, the effect became more and more feeble, until, near the snow-line, it almost wholly disappeared.
We remained that night at the baths of Bormio, but the following afternoon being fine we wished to avail ourselves of the fair weather to witness the scene from the summit of the pass. Twilight came on before we reached Santa Maria, but a gorgeous orange overspread the western horizon, from which we hoped to derive sufficient light. It was a little too late when we reached the top, but still the scene was magnificent. A multitude of mountains raised their crowns towards heaven, while above all rose the snow-white cone of the Ortler. Far into the valley the giant stretched his granite limbs, until they were hid from us by darkness. As this deepened, the heavens became more and more crowded with stars, which blazed like gems over the heads of the mountains. At times the silence was perfect, unbroken save by the crackling of the frozen snow beneath our own feet; while at other times a breeze would swoop down upon us, keen and hostile, scattering the snow from the roofs of the wooden galleries in frozen powder over us. Long after night had set in, a ghastly gleam rested upon the summit of the Ortler, while the peaks in front deepened to a dusky neutral tint, the more distant ones being lost in gloom. We descended at a swift pace to Trafoi, which we reached before 11 p.m.
SINGULAR HAILSTORM. 1856.
Meran was our next resting-place, whence we turned through the Schnalzerthal to Unserfrau, and thence over the Hochjoch to Fend. From a religious procession we took a guide, who, though partly intoxicated, did his duty well. Before reaching the summit of the pass we were assailed by a violent hailstorm, each hailstone being a frozen cone with a rounded end. Had not their motion through the air something to do with the shape of these hailstones? The theory of meteorites now generally accepted is that they are small planetary bodies drawn to the earth by gravity, and brought to incandescence by friction against the earth's atmosphere. Such a body moving through the atmosphere must have condensed hot air in front of it, and rarefied cool air behind it; and the same is true to a small extent of a hailstone. This distribution of temperature must, I imagine, have some influence on the shape of the stone. Possibly also the stratified appearance of some hailstones may be connected with this action.[A]
THE HOCHJOCH AND FEND. 1856.
The hail ceased and the heights above us cleared as we ascended. At the top of the pass we found ourselves on the verge of a great névé, which lay between two ranges of summits, sloping down to the base of each range from a high and rounded centre: a wilder glacier scene I have scarcely witnessed. Wishing to obtain a more perfect view of the region, I diverged from the track followed by Dr. Frankland and the guide, and climbed a ridge of snow about half a mile to the right of them. A glorious expanse was before me, stretching itself in vast undulations, and heaping itself here and there into mountainous cones, white and pure, with the deep blue heaven behind them. Here I had my first experience of hidden crevasses, and to my extreme astonishment once found myself