[Illustration: ZÜRICH, WITH DISTANT ALPS.]
What is there more suggestive of mysterious power than a frozen cataract like this? Apparently as cold and motionless as death, it nevertheless is moving downward with a slow, resistless march, whose progress can be accurately traced from day to day; so accurately, indeed, that objects lost to-day in one of these crevasses may be confidently looked for at the glacier's terminus after a certain number of years. Forever nourished on the heights, forever wasting in the valleys, these glaciers are the moving mysteries of the upper world; vast, irresistible, congealed processions,—the frozen reservoirs of rivers that glide at last from their reluctant arms in a mad haste to reach the sea.
"Perennial snow, perennial stream, Perennial motion, all things seem; Nor time, nor space will ever show The world that was an hour ago."
When we examine any portion of a glacier's surface, we find abundant evidence of its motion. It has been forced into a million strange, distorted shapes, many of which are larger than the grandest cathedrals man has ever framed. Between them are vast chasms of unknown depth. As it descends thus, inch by inch, obedient to the pressure from above, it flings its frigid waves to the right and left, close to the orchards and the homes of man. It is the ghastly synonym of death in life; for here a man may swing the scythe or gather flowers, while a hundred yards away his brother may be perishing in a crevasse!
To really understand a glacier one must venture out upon its icy flood. One day while on the Mer de Glace, I was (as usual in such expeditions) preceded and followed by a guide, to both of whom I was attached by a stout rope. On that occasion one thing impressed me greatly. It was a strange sound, called by the guides "brullen," or growling, which is in reality the mysterious moaning of the glacier, caused by the rending asunder of huge blocks of ice in its slow, grinding descent.
[Illustration: IRRESISTIBLE CONGEALED PROCESSIONS.]
At times it seemed to me impossible to proceed, but the experienced guide who led the way laughed at my fears; and finally, to increase my confidence, actually entered one of the appalling caverns of the glacier, which like the jaws of some huge polar bear, seemed capable of closing with dire consequences. For a few minutes he remained seated beneath a mass of overhanging ice, apparently as calm as I was apprehensive for his safety. No accident occurred, and yet my fears were not unfounded. For though there is a fascination in thus venturing beneath the frozen billows of a glacier, there may be treachery in its siren loveliness. Huge blocks of ice frequently fall without the slightest warning, and many a reckless tourist has thus been killed, or perhaps maimed for life.