The Glaciers of the Alps Part 3

The length is fixed at fifteen feet, because I have found this length extremely efficient in similar experiments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3, 4. Boats' sails inverted by Atmospheric Refraction.]

[Sidenote: ATMOSPHERIC REFRACTION. 1857.]

On returning to the pier at Villeneuve, a peculiar flickering motion was manifest upon the surface of the distant portions of the lake, and I soon noticed that the coast line was inverted by atmospheric refraction.

It required a long distance to produce the effect: no trace of it was seen about the Castle of Chillon, but at Vevey and beyond it, the whole coast was clearly inverted; and the houses on the margin of the lake were also imaged to a certain height. Two boats at a considerable distance presented the appearance sketched in Figs. 3 and 4; the hull of each, except a small portion at the end, was invisible, but the sails seemed lifted up high in the air, with their inverted images below; as the boats drew nearer the hulls appeared inverted, the apparent height of the vessel above the surface of the lake being thereby nearly doubled, while the sails and higher objects, in these cases, were almost completely cut away. When viewed through a telescope the sensible horizon of the lake presented a billowy tumultuous appearance, fragments being incessantly detached from it and suspended in the air.

[Sidenote: MIRAGE. 1857.]

The explanation of this effect is the same as that of the mirage of the desert, which may be found in almost any book on physics, and which so tantalized the French soldiers in Egypt. They often mistook this aerial inversion for the reflection from a lake, and on trial found hot and sterile sand at the place where they expected refres.h.i.+ng waters. The effect was shown by Monge, one of the learned men who accompanied the expedition, to be due to the total reflection of very oblique rays at the upper surface of the layer of rarefied air which was nearest to the heated earth. A sandy plain, in the early part of the day, is peculiarly favourable for the production of such effects; and on the extensive flat strand which stretches between Mont St. Michel and the coast adjacent to Avranches in Normandy, I have noticed Mont Tombeline reflected as if gla.s.s instead of sand surrounded it and formed its mirror.

[Sidenote: CHAMOUNI AND THE MONTANVERT. 1857.]

CHAMOUNI AND THE MONTANVERT.

(5.)

On the evening of the 12th of July I reached Chamouni; the weather was not quite clear, but it was promising; white c.u.muli had floated round Mont Blanc during the day, but these diminished more and more, and the light of the setting sun was of that lingering rosy hue which bodes good weather. Two parallel beams of a purple tinge were drawn by the shadows of the adjacent peaks, straight across the Glacier des Bossons, and the Glacier des Pelerins was also steeped for a time in the same purple light. Once when the surrounding red illumination was strong, the shadows of the Grands Mulets falling upon the adjacent snow appeared of a vivid green.

This green belonged to the cla.s.s of _subjective_ colours, or colours produced by contrast, about which a volume might be written. The eye received the impression of green, but the colour was not external to the eye. Place a red wafer on white paper, and look at it intently, it will be surrounded in a little time by a green fringe: move the wafer bodily away, and the entire s.p.a.ce which it occupied upon the paper will appear green. A body may have its proper colour entirely masked in this way.

Let a red wafer be attached to a piece of red gla.s.s, and from a moderately illuminated position let the sky be regarded through the gla.s.s; the wafer will appear of a vivid green. If a strong beam of light be sent through a red gla.s.s and caused to fall upon a screen, which at the same time is moderately illuminated by a separate source of white light, an opaque body placed in the path of the beam will cast a green shadow upon the screen which may be seen by several hundred persons at once. If a blue gla.s.s be used, the shadow will be yellow, which is the complementary colour to blue.

[Sidenote: COLOURED SHADOWS. 1857.]

When we suddenly pa.s.s from open sunlight to a moderately illuminated room, it appears dark at first, but after a little time the eye regains the power of seeing objects distinctly. Thus one effect of light upon the eye is to render it less sensitive, and light of any particular colour falling upon the eye blunts its appreciation of that colour. Let us apply this to the shadow upon the screen. This shadow is moderately illuminated by a jet of white light; but the s.p.a.ce surrounding it is red, the effect of which upon the eye is to blind it in some degree to the perception of red. Hence, when the feeble white light of the shadow reaches the eye, the red component of this light is, as it were, abstracted from it, and the eye sees the residual colour, which is green. A similar explanation applies to the shadows of the Grands Mulets.

On the 13th of July I was joined by my friend Mr. Thomas Hirst, and on the 14th we examined together the end of the Mer de Glace. In former times the whole volume of the Arveiron escaped from beneath the ice at the end of the glacier, forming a fine arch at its place of issue. This year a fraction only of the water thus found egress; the greater portion of it escaping laterally from the glacier at the summit of the rocks called _Les Mottets_, down which it tumbled in a fine cascade. The vault at the end of the glacier was nevertheless respectable, and rather tempting to a traveller in search of information regarding the structure of the ice. Perhaps, however, Nature meant to give me a friendly warning at the outset, for, while speculating as to the wisdom of entering the cavern, it suddenly gave way, and, with a crash which rivalled thunder, the roof strewed itself in ruins upon the floor.

[Sidenote: SUNRISE AT CHAMOUNI. 1857.]

Many years ago I had read with delight Coleridge's poem ent.i.tled 'Sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni,' and to witness in all perfection the scene described by the poet, I waited at Chamouni a day longer than was otherwise necessary. On the morning of Wednesday, the 15th of July, I rose before the sun; Mont Blanc and his wondrous staff of Aiguilles were without a cloud; eastward the sky was of a pale orange which gradually shaded off to a kind of rosy violet, and this again blended by imperceptible degrees with the deep zenithal blue. The morning star was still s.h.i.+ning to the right, and the moon also turned a pale face towards the rising day. The valley was full of music; from the adjacent woods issued a gush of song, while the sound of the Arve formed a suitable ba.s.s to the shriller melody of the birds. The mountain rose for a time cold and grand, with no apparent stain upon his snows. Suddenly the sunbeams struck his crown and converted it into a boss of gold. For some time it remained the only gilded summit in view, holding communion with the dawn while all the others waited in silence. These, in the order of their heights, came afterwards, relaxing, as the sunbeams struck each in succession, into a blush and smile.

[Sidenote: GLACIER DES BOIS. 1857.]

On the same day we had our luggage transported to the Montanvert, while we clambered along the lateral moraine of the glacier to the Chapeau.

The rocks alongside the glacier were beautifully scratched and polished, and I paid particular attention to them, for the purpose of furnis.h.i.+ng myself with a key to ancient glacier action. The scene to my right was one of the most wonderful I had ever witnessed. Along the entire slope of the Glacier des Bois, the ice was cleft and riven into the most striking and fantastic forms. It had not yet suffered much from the wasting influence of the summer weather, but its towers and minarets sprang from the general ma.s.s with clean chiselled outlines. Some stood erect, others leaned, while the white debris, strewn here and there over the glacier, showed where the wintry edifices had fallen, breaking themselves to pieces, and grinding the ma.s.ses on which they fell to powder. Some of them gave way during our inspection of the place, and shook the valley with the reverberated noise of their fall. I endeavoured to get near them, but failed; the chasms at the margin of the glacier were too dangerous, and the stones resting upon the heights too loosely poised to render persistence in the attempt excusable.

We subsequently crossed the glacier to the Montanvert, and I formally took up my position there. The rooms of the hotel were separated from each other by wooden part.i.tions merely, and thus the noise of early risers in one room was plainly heard in the next. For the sake of quiet, therefore, I had my bed placed in the _chateau_ next door,--a little octagonal building erected by some kind and sentimental Frenchman, and dedicated "_a la Nature_." My host at first demurred, thinking the place not "_propre_," but I insisted, and he acquiesced. True the stone floor was dark with moisture, and on the walls a glistening was here and there observable, which suggested rheumatism, and other penalties, but I had had no experience of rheumatism, and trusted to the strength which mountain air and exercise were sure to give me, for power to resist its attacks. Moreover, to dispel some of the humidity, it was agreed that a large pine fire should be made there on necessary occasions.

[Sidenote: QUARTERS AT THE MONTANVERT. 1857.]

Though singularly favoured on the whole, still our residence at the Montanvert was sufficiently long to give us specimens of all kinds of weather; and thus my chateau derived an interest from the mutations of external nature. Sometimes no breath disturbed the perfect serenity of the night, and the moon, set in a black-blue sky, turned a face of almost supernatural brightness to the mountains, while in her absence the thick-strewn stars alone flashed and twinkled through the transparent air. Sometimes dull dank fog choked the valley, and heavy rain plashed upon the stones outside. On two or three occasions we were favoured by a thunderstorm, every peal of which broke into a hundred echoes, while the seams of lightning which ran through the heavens produced a wonderful intermittence of gloom and glare. And as I sat within, musing on the experiences of the day, with my pine logs crackling, and the ruddy fire-light gleaming over the walls, and lending animation to the visages sketched upon them with charcoal by the guides, I felt that my position was in every way worthy of a student of nature.

THE MER DE GLACE.

(6.)

[Sidenote: A RIVER OF ICE. 1857.]

The name "Mer de Glace" has doubtless led many who have never seen this glacier to a totally erroneous conception of its character. Misled probably by this term, a distinguished writer, for example, defines a glacier to be a sheet of ice spread out upon the slope of a mountain; whereas the Mer de Glace is indeed a _river_, and not a _sea_ of ice.

But certain forms upon its surface, often noticed and described, and which I saw for the first time from the window of our hotel on the morning of the 16th of July, suggest at once the origin of the name. The glacier here has the appearance of a sea which, after it had been tossed by a storm, had suddenly stiffened into rest. The ridges upon its surface accurately resemble waves in shape, and this singular appearance is produced in the following way:--

Some distance above the Montanvert--opposite to the Echelets--the glacier, in pa.s.sing down an incline, is rent by deep fissures, between each two of which a ridge of ice intervenes. At first the edges of these ridges are sharp and angular, but they are soon sculptured off by the action of the sun. The bearing of the Mer de Glace being approximately north and south, the sun at mid-day s.h.i.+nes down the glacier, or rather very obliquely across it; and the consequence is, that the fronts of the ridges, which look downward, remain in shadow all the day, while the backs of the ridges, which look up the glacier, meet the direct stroke of the solar rays. The ridges thus acted upon have their hindmost angles wasted off and converted into slopes which represent the _back_ of a wave, while the opposite sides of the ridges, which are protected from the sun, preserve their steepness, and represent the _front_ of the wave. Fig. 5 will render my meaning at once plain.

[Sidenote: FROZEN WAVES. 1857.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 5. Wave-like forms on the Mer de Glace.]

The dotted lines are intended to represent three of the ridges into which the glacier is divided, with their interposed fissures; the dots representing the boundaries of the ridges when the glacier is first broken. The parallel shading lines represent the direction of the sun's rays, which, falling obliquely upon the ridges, waste away the right-hand corners, and finally produce wave-like forms.

We spent a day or two in making the general acquaintance of the glacier.

On the 16th we ascended till we came to the rim of the Talefre basin, from which we had a good view of the glacier system of the region. The laminated structure of the ice was a point which particularly interested me; and as I saw the exposed sections of the _neve_, counted the lines of stratification, and compared these with the lines upon the ends of the secondary glaciers, I felt the absolute necessity either of connecting the veined _structure_ with the _strata_ by a continuous chain of observations, or of proving by ocular evidence that they were totally distinct from each other. I was well acquainted with the literature of the subject, but nothing that I had read was sufficient to prove what I required. Strictly speaking, nothing that had been written upon the subject rose above the domain of _opinion_, while I felt that without absolute _demonstration_ the question would never be set at rest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 6. Glacier Table.]

[Sidenote: GLACIER TABLES. 1857.]

On this day we saw some fine glacier tables; flat ma.s.ses of rock, raised high upon columns of ice: Fig. 6 is a sketch of one of the finest of them. Some of them fell from their pedestals while we were near them, and the clean ice-surfaces which they left behind sparkled with minute stars as the small bubbles of air ruptured the film of water by which they were overspread. I also noticed that "pet.i.t bruit de crepitation,"

to which M. Aga.s.siz alludes, and which he refers to the rupture of the ice by the expansion of the air-bubbles contained within it. When I first read Aga.s.siz's account of it, I thought it might be produced by the rupture of the minute air-bubbles which incessantly escape from the glacier. This, doubtless, produces an effect, but there is something in the character of the sound to be referred, I think, to a less obvious cause, which I shall notice further on.

[Sidenote: FIRST SIGHT OF THE DIRT-BANDS. 1857.]

At six P.M. this day I reached the Montanvert; and the same evening, wrapping my plaid around me, I wandered up towards Charmoz, and from its heights observed, as they had been observed fifteen years previously by Professor Forbes, the _dirt-bands_ of the Mer de Glace. They were different from any I had previously seen, and I felt a strong desire to trace them to their origin. Content, however, with the performance of the day, and feeling healthily tired by it, I lay down upon the bilberry bushes and fell asleep. It was dark when I awoke, and I experienced some difficulty and risk in getting down from the petty eminence referred to.

The illumination of the glacier, as remarked by Professor Forbes, has great influence upon the appearance of the bands; they are best seen in a subdued light, and I think for the following reasons:--

The dirt-bands are seen simply because they send less light to the eye than the cleaner portions of the glacier which lie between them; two surfaces, differently illuminated, are presented to the eye, and it is found that this difference is more observable when the light is that of evening than when it is that of noon.

It is only within certain limits that the eye is able to perceive differences of intensity in different lights; beyond a certain intensity, if I may use the expression, light ceases to be light, and becomes mere pain. The naked eye can detect no difference in brightness between the electric light and the lime light, although, when we come to strict measurement, the former may possess many times the intensity of the latter. It follows from this that we might reduce the ordinary electric light to a fraction of its intensity, without any perceptible change of brightness to the naked eye which looks at it. But if we reduce the lime light in the same proportion the effect would be very different. This light lies much nearer to the limit at which the eye can appreciate differences of brightness, and its reduction might bring it quite within this limit, and make it sensibly dimmer than before. Hence we see that when two sources of intense light are presented to the eye, by reducing both the lights in the same proportion, the _difference_ between them may become more perceptible.

[Sidenote: BANDS SEEN BEST BY TWILIGHT. 1857.]

Now the dirt-bands and the s.p.a.ces between them resemble, in some measure, the two lights above mentioned. By the full glare of noon both are so strongly illuminated that the difference which the eye perceives is very small; as the evening advances the light of both is lowered in the same proportion, but the differential effect upon the eye is thereby augmented, and the bands are consequently more clearly seen.

(7.)