Part 4 (1/2)
”Snow is ice in the form of light flocculent crystals, is it not? Why, at home, if you take up moist snow and press it hard in your hands, you can almost turn it into ice. If you placed it in a press, and applied much force, it would become perfectly clear ice. Well, there's pressure enough here to turn it into ice; and besides, the snow is always melting in the hot sun, and then freezing again at night.”
”Yes, I see!” cried Saxe; ”but it does seem queer. Why, we've got summer here, with flowers and bees and b.u.t.terflies, and if we go down to that glacier, I suppose we can step on to winter.”
”Yes, my lad; and if we like to climb a little higher up the ice, we can place ourselves in such severe winter that we should be frozen to death.”
”Then we will not go,” said Saxe, laughing. ”You told me one day--No, you didn't, it was in a story I read, 'man is best as he is.' But I say, Mr Dale, how about the river? doesn't it come from the glacier?”
”Yes, of course. These vast glaciers are the sources of the great Swiss and Italian rivers. The Rhine and the Rhone both begin up in the mountains here, and the Aar and the Reuss start pretty close to them.
When we get down here you will see how this stream runs from a little ice-cave.”
”But what makes it so dirty?”
”My good fellow, we have come to climb, and my name is not Barlow. You must read and search out these things. You know how that stone or ma.s.s fell with a roar lower down?”
”Not likely to forget it, sir,” replied Saxe, with a laugh.
”Well, the stones are always falling from the bare sides of the gorge; they drop on to the glacier, and in course of time are washed by the melting ice into the creva.s.ses and down to the bare rock beneath the glacier. There they glide down, with its weight upon them, right over the rock, and the surface is worn off from the fallen stone and the bed rock in a thin paste, which is washed away by the glacier. Then, as it descends, it of course discolours the water.”
”Shall we go down to the toe of the glacier!” said the guide.
”Yes; come along.”
”Can we trust the young herr to descend?”
Dale leaned forward to gaze down the rugged slope, which was excessively steep, but broken up into rift and gully, offering plenty of foot and hand-hold.
”What do you think, Saxe?” he said. ”Can you manage to get down there?”
”Get down there?” said the lad contemptuously; ”why, I'd race you to the bottom.”
”No doubt, and be down first,” said Dale quietly; ”but I should be ready to go on, and you would want carrying to the nearest chalet to wait for a surgeon.”
”What, after getting down that bit of a place?”
”You stupid fellow,” said Dale testily; ”that bit of a place is a precipice of five hundred feet. How am I to impress upon you that everything here is far bigger than you think? Look here,” he continued, pointing: ”do you see that cow yonder, on that bit of green slope beside those overhanging rocks?”
”No; I can see a little dog by a heap of stones.”
”That will do for an example,” said Dale. ”Here, Melchior, is not that a cow just across the stream there?”
”Wait a moment,” cried Saxe eagerly. ”I say it's a little dog. Who's right?”
”You are both wrong,” said the guide, smiling. ”There is a man here has a chalet behind the pines. He comes up the valley with his cattle for the summer, when the snow is gone.”
”Is there snow here in winter, then?” said Saxe.
”The valley is nearly full in winter. No one can come up here.”
”But that isn't a cow,” cried Saxe, pointing.