I am not so ignorant about glacial movement, now, as I
was when I took passage on the Gorner Glacier.
I have "read up" since. I am aware that these vast
bodies of ice do not travel at the same rate of speed;
while the Gorner Glacier makes less than an inch a day,
the Unter-Aar Glacier makes as much as eight; and still
other glaciers are said to go twelve, sixteen, and even
twenty inches a day. One writer says that the slowest
glacier travels twenty-give feet a year, and the fastest
four hundred.
What is a glacier? It is easy to say it looks like a
frozen river which occupies the bed of a winding gorge
or gully between mountains. But that gives no notion
of its vastness. For it is sometimes six hundred
feet thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers six hundred
feet deep; no, our rivers are six feet, twenty feet,
and sometimes fifty feet deep; we are not quite able
to grasp so large a fact as an ice-river six hundred feet deep.
The glacier's surface is not smooth and level, but has
deep swales and swelling elevations, and sometimes has
the look of a tossing sea whose turbulent billows were
frozen hard in the instant of their most violent motion;
the glacier's surface is not a flawless mass, but is a river
with cracks or crevices, some narrow, some gaping wide.
Many a man, the victim of a slip or a misstep, has plunged
down on of these and met his death. Men have been
fished out of them alive; but it was when they did not
go to a great depth; the cold of the great depths would
quickly stupefy a man, whether he was hurt or unhurt.
These cracks do not go straight down; one can seldom see
more than twenty to forty feet down them; consequently men
who have disappeared in them have been sought for,
in the hope that they had stopped within helping distance,
whereas their case, in most instances, had really been
hopeless from the beginning.
In 1864 a party of tourists was descending Mont Blanc,
and while picking their way over one of the mighty glaciers
of that lofty region, roped together, as was proper,
a young porter disengaged himself from the line and
started across an ice-bridge which spanned a crevice.
It broke under him with a crash, and he disappeared.
The others could not see how deep he had gone, so it might
be worthwhile to try and rescue him. A brave young guide
named Michel Payot volunteered.
Two ropes were made fast to his leather belt and he bore
the end of a third one in his hand to tie to the victim
in case he found him. He was lowered into the crevice,
he descended deeper and deeper between the clear blue
walls of solid ice, he approached a bend in the crack
and disappeared under it. Down, and still down, he went,
into this profound grave; when he had reached a depth
of eighty feet he passed under another bend in the crack,
and thence descended eighty feet lower, as between
perpendicular precipices. Arrived at this stage of one
hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the glacier,
he peered through the twilight dimness and perceived
that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at
a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost
in darkness. What a place that was to be in--especially
if that leather belt should break! The compression
of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow;
he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make
them hear. They still lowered him, deeper and deeper.
Then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could;
his friends understood, and dragged him out of those icy jaws
of death.
Then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down
two hundred feet, but it found no bottom. It came up
covered with congelations--evidence enough that even if
the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones,
a swift death from cold was sure, anyway.
A glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow.
It pushes ahead of its masses of boulders which are
packed together, and they stretch across the gorge,
right in front of it, like a long grave or a long,
sharp roof. This is called a moraine. It also shoves
out a moraine along each side of its course.
Imposing as the modern glaciers are, they are not so
huge as were some that once existed. For instance,
Mr. Whymper says:
"At some very remote period the Valley of Aosta was occupied
by a vast glacier, which flowed down its entire length from
Mont Blanc to the plain of Piedmont, remained stationary,
or nearly so, at its mouth for many centuries, and deposited
there enormous masses of debris. The length of this
glacier exceeded EIGHTY MILES, and it drained a basin
twenty-five to thirty-five miles across, bounded by the
highest mountains in the Alps. The great peaks rose
several thousand feet above the glaciers, and then, as now,
shattered by sun and frost, poured down their showers of
rocks and stones, in witness of which there are the immense
piles of angular fragments that constitute the moraines of Ivrea.
"The moraines around Ivrea are of extraordinary dimensions.
That which was on the left bank of the glacier is
about THIRTEEN MILES long, and in some places rises
to a height of TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FEET
above the floor of the valley! The terminal moraines
(those which are pushed in front of the glaciers)
cover something like twenty square miles of country.
At the mouth of the Valley of Aosta, the thickness of
the glacier must have been at least TWO THOUSAND feet,
and its width, at that part, FIVE MILES AND A QUARTER."
It is not easy to get at a comprehension of a mass of ice
like that. If one could cleave off the butt end of such
a glacier--an oblong block two or three miles wide
by five and a quarter long and two thousand feet thick--
he could completely hide the city of New York under it,
and Trinity steeple would only stick up into it relatively
as far as a shingle-nail would stick up into the bottom
of a Saratoga trunk.
"The boulders from Mont Blanc, upon the plain below Ivrea,
assure us that the glacier which transported them existed
for a prodigious length of time. Their present distance from
the cliffs from which they were derived is about 420,000 feet,
and if we assume that they traveled at the rate of 400 feet
per annum, their journey must have occupied them no less
than 1,055 years! In all probability they did not travel so
fast."
Glaciers are sometimes hurried out of their characteristic
snail-pace. A marvelous spectacle is presented then.
Mr. Whymper refers to a case which occurred in Iceland
in 1721:
"It seems that in the neighborhood of the mountain Kotlugja,
large bodies of water formed underneath, or within
the glaciers (either on account of the interior heat of
the earth, or from other causes), and at length acquired
irresistible power, tore the glaciers from their mooring on
the land, and swept them over every obstacle into the sea.
Prodigious masses of ice were thus borne for a distance
of about ten miles over land in the space of a few hours;
and their bulk was so enormous that they covered the sea
for seven miles from the shore, and remained aground
in six hundred feet of water! The denudation of the land
was upon a grand scale. All superficial accumulations were
swept away, and the bedrock was exposed. It was described,
in graphic language, how all irregularities and depressions
were obliterated, and a smooth surface of several miles'
area laid bare, and that this area had the appearance
of having been PLANED BY A PLANE."
The account translated from the Icelandic says that the
mountainlike ruins of this majestic glacier so covered
the sea that as far as the eye could reach no open water
was discoverable, even from the highest peaks. A monster
wall or barrier of ice was built across a considerable
stretch of land, too, by this strange irruption:
"One can form some idea of the altitude of this barrier
of ice when it is mentioned that from Hofdabrekka farm,
which lies high up on a fjeld, one could not see
Hjorleifshofdi opposite, which is a fell six hundred and
forty feet in height; but in order to do so had to clamber
up a mountain slope east of Hofdabrekka twelve hundred feet
high."
These things will help the reader to understand why it is
that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel
tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers
together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man
and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only
remain within the influence of their sublime presence long
enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.
The Alpine glaciers move--that is granted, now, by everybody.
But there was a time when people scoffed at the idea;
they said you might as well expect leagues of solid rock
to crawl along the ground as expect leagues of ice to do it.
But proof after proof as furnished, and the finally the
world had to believe.
The wise men not only said the glacier moved, but they
timed its movement. They ciphered out a glacier's gait,
and then said confidently that it would travel just
so far in so many years. There is record of a striking
and curious example of the accuracy which may be attained
in these reckonings.
In 1820 the ascent of Mont Blanc was attempted by a Russian
and two Englishmen, with seven guides. They had reached
a prodigious altitude, and were approaching the summit,
when an avalanche swept several of the party down a
sharp slope of two hundred feet and hurled five of them
(all guides) into one of the crevices of a glacier.
The life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer
which was strapped to his back--it bridged the crevice
and suspended him until help came. The alpenstock
or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way.
Three men were lost--Pierre Balmat, Pierre Carrier,
and Auguste Tairraz. They had been hurled down into the
fathomless great deeps of the crevice.
Dr. Forbes, the English geologist, had made frequent visits
to the Mont Blanc region, and had given much attention
to the disputed question of the movement of glaciers.
During one of these visits he completed his estimates
of the rate of movement of the glacier which had swallowed
up the three guides, and uttered the prediction that the
glacier would deliver up its dead at the foot of the
mountain thirty-five years from the time of the accident,
or possibly forty.
A dull, slow journey--a movement imperceptible to any eye--
but it was proceeding, nevertheless, and without cessation.
It was a journey which a rolling stone would make in a
few seconds--the lofty point of departure was visible
from the village below in the valley.
The prediction cut curiously close to the truth;
forty-one years after the catastrophe, the remains
were cast forth at the foot of the glacier.
I find an interesting account of the matter in the
HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC, by Stephen d'Arve. I will
condense this account, as follows:
On the 12th of August, 1861, at the hour of the close of mass,
a guide arrived out of breath at the mairie of Chamonix,
and bearing on his shoulders a very lugubrious burden.
It was a sack filled with human remains which he had gathered
from the orifice of a crevice in the Glacier des Bossons.
He conjectured that these were remains of the victims
of the catastrophe of 1820, and a minute inquest,
immediately instituted by the local authorities,
soon demonstrated the correctness of his supposition.
The contents of the sack were spread upon a long table,
and officially inventoried, as follows:
Portions of three human skulls. Several tufts of black and
blonde hair. A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth.
A forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact.
The flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand
preserved a degree of flexibility in the articulations.
The ring-finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and the
stain of the blood was still visible and unchanged after
forty-one years. A left foot, the flesh white and fresh.
Along with these fragments were portions of waistcoats, hats,
hobnailed shoes, and other clothing; a wing of a pigeon,
with black feathers; a fragment of an alpenstock;
a tin lantern; and lastly, a boiled leg of mutton,
the only flesh among all the remains that exhaled an
unpleasant odor. The guide said that the mutton had no
odor when he took it from the glacier; an hour's exposure
to the sun had already begun the work of decomposition upon it.
Persons were called for, to identify these poor pathetic relics,
and a touching scene ensured. Two men were still living
who had witnessed the grim catastrophe of nearly half
a century before--Marie Couttet (saved by his baton)
and Julien Davouassoux (saved by the barometer). These aged
men entered and approached the table. Davouassoux, more than
eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely
and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory
were torpid with age; but Couttet's faculties were still
perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion. He
said:
"Pierre Balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat. This bit of skull,
with the tuft of blond hair, was his; this is his hat.
Pierre Carrier was very dark; this skull was his, and this
felt hat. This is Balmat's hand, I remember it so well!"
and the old man bent down and kissed it reverently,
then closed his fingers upon it in an affectionate grasp,
crying out, "I could never have dared to believe that
before quitting this world it would be granted me to
press once more the hand of one of those brave comrades,
the hand of my good friend Balmat."
There is something weirdly pathetic about the picture
of that white-haired veteran greeting with his loving
handshake this friend who had been dead forty years.
When these hands had met last, they were alike in the
softness and freshness of youth; now, one was brown and
wrinkled and horny with age, while the other was still
as young and fair and blemishless as if those forty years
had come and gone in a single moment, leaving no mark
of their passage. Time had gone on, in the one case;
it had stood still in the other. A man who has not seen
a friend for a generation, keeps him in mind always as he
saw him last, and is somehow surprised, and is also shocked,
to see the aging change the years have wrought when he
sees him again. Marie Couttet's experience, in finding
his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he
had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience
which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps.
Couttet identified other relics:
"This hat belonged to Auguste Tairraz. He carried
the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon
the summit. Here is the wing of one of those pigeons.
And here is the fragment of my broken baton; it was by
grace of that baton that my life was saved. Who could
have told me that I should one day have the satisfaction
to look again upon this bit of wood that supported me above
the grave that swallowed up my unfortunate companions!"
No portions of the body of Tairraz, other than a piece
of the skull, had been found. A diligent search was made,
but without result. However, another search was
instituted a year later, and this had better success.
Many fragments of clothing which had belonged to the lost
guides were discovered; also, part of a lantern, and a
green veil with blood-stains on it. But the interesting
feature was this:
One of the searchers came suddenly upon a sleeved arm
projecting from a crevice in the ice-wall, with the hand
outstretched as if offering greeting! "The nails of this white
hand were still rosy, and the pose of the extended fingers
seemed to express an eloquent welcome to the long-lost light of
day."
The hand and arm were alone; there was no trunk.
After being removed from the ice the flesh-tints quickly
faded out and the rosy nails took on the alabaster
hue of death. This was the third RIGHT hand found;
therefore, all three of the lost men were accounted for,
beyond cavil or question.
Dr. Hamel was the Russian gentleman of the party which
made the ascent at the time of the famous disaster.
He left Chamonix as soon as he conveniently could after
the descent; and as he had shown a chilly indifference
about the calamity, and offered neither sympathy nor
assistance to the widows and orphans, he carried with
him the cordial execrations of the whole community.
Four months before the first remains were found,
a Chamonix guide named Balmat--a relative of one of
the lost men--was in London, and one day encountered
a hale old gentleman in the British Museum, who said:
"I overheard your name. Are you from Chamonix,
Monsieur Balmat?"
"Yes, sir."
"Haven't they found the bodies of my three guides,
yet? I am Dr. Hamel."
"Alas, no, monsieur."
"Well, you'll find them, sooner or later."
"Yes, it is the opinion of Dr. Forbes and Mr. Tyndall,
that the glacier will sooner or later restore to us the
remains of the unfortunate victims."
"Without a doubt, without a doubt. And it will be a great
thing for Chamonix, in the matter of attracting tourists.
You can get up a museum with those remains that will draw!"
This savage idea has not improved the odor of Dr. Hamel's
name in Chamonix by any means. But after all, the man
was sound on human nature. His idea was conveyed
to the public officials of Chamonix, and they gravely
discussed it around the official council-table. They
were only prevented from carrying it into execution by
the determined opposition of the friends and descendants
of the lost guides, who insisted on giving the remains
Christian burial, and succeeded in their purpose.
A close watch had to be kept upon all the poor remnants
and fragments, to prevent embezzlement. A few accessory
odds and ends were sold. Rags and scraps of the coarse
clothing were parted with at the rate equal to about
twenty dollars a yard; a piece of a lantern and one or
two other trifles brought nearly their weight in gold;
and an Englishman offered a pound sterling for a single
breeches-button.
