of ice, and hence their bold
peaks. In Scotland, on the contrary, and still more in Norway, the sheet
of ice which once, as is the case with Greenland now, spread over the
whole country, has shorn off the summits and reduced them almost to
gigantic bosses; while in Wales the same causes, together with the
resistless action of time--for, as already mentioned, the Welsh hills
are far older than the mountains of Switzerland--has ground down the
once lofty summits and reduced them to mere stumps, such as, if the
present forces are left to work out their results, the Swiss mountains
will be thousands, or rather tens of thousands, of years hence.

The "snow line" in Switzerland is generally given as being between 8500
and 9000 feet. Above this level the snow or _neve_ gradually accumulates
until it forms "glaciers," solid rivers of ice which descend more or
less far down the valleys. No one who has not seen a glacier can
possibly realise what they are like. Fig. 20 represents the glacier of
the Bluemlis Alp, and the Plate the Mer de Glace.

[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Glacier of the Bluemlis Alp.]

[Illustration: THE MER DE GLACE.

_To face page 229._]

They are often very beautiful. "Mount Beerenberg," says Lord Dufferin,
"in size, colour, and effect far surpassed anything I had anticipated.
The glaciers were quite an unexpected element of beauty. Imagine a
mighty river, of as great a volume as the Thames, started down the side
of a mountain, bursting over every impediment, whirled into a thousand
eddies, tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering
cataracts of foam, then suddenly struck rigid by a power so
instantaneous in its action that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of
spray have stiffened to the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had
seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of
the contrast between the actual tranquillity of these silent crystal
rivers and the violent descending energy impressed upon their exterior.
You must remember too all this is upon a scale of such prodigious
magnitude, that when we succeeded subsequently in approaching the
spot--where with a leap like that of Niagara one of these glaciers
plunges down into the sea--the eye, no longer able to take in its
fluvial character, was content to rest in simple astonishment at what
then appeared a lucent precipice of grey-green ice, rising to the height
of several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel."[45