]

The cliffs above glaciers shower down fragments of rock which gradually
accumulate at the sides and at the end of the glaciers, forming mounds
known as "moraines." Many ancient moraines occur far beyond the present
region of glaciers.

In considering the condition of alpine valleys we must remember that the
glaciers formerly descended much further than they do at present. The
glaciers of the Rhone for instance occupied the whole of the Valais,
filled the Lake of Geneva--or rather the site now occupied by that
lake--and rose 2000 feet up the slopes of the Jura; the Upper Ticino,
and contributory valleys, were occupied by another which filled the
basin of the Lago Maggiore; a third occupied the valley of the Dora
Baltea, and has left a moraine at Ivrea some twenty miles long, and
which rises no less than 1500 feet above the present level of the river.
The Scotch and Scandinavian valleys were similarly filled by rivers of
ice, which indeed at one time covered the whole country with an immense
sheet, as Greenland is at present. Enormous blocks of stone, the Pierre
a Niton at Geneva and the Pierre a Bot above Neuchatel, for instance,
were carried by these glaciers for miles and miles; and many of the
stones in the Norfolk cliffs were brought by ice from Norway (perhaps,
however, by Icebergs), across what is now the German Ocean. Again
wherever the rocks are hard enough to have withstood the weather, we
find them polished and ground, just as, and even more so than, those at
the ends and sides of existing glaciers.

The most magnificent glacier tracks in the Alps are, in Ruskin's
opinion, those on the rocks of the great angle opposite Martigny; the
most interesting those above the channel of the Trient between Valorsine
and the valley of the Rhone.

In Great Britain I know no better illustration of ice action than is to
be seen on the road leading down from Glen Quoich to Loch Hourn, one of
the most striking examples of desolate and savage scenery in Scotland.
Its name in Celtic is said to mean the Lake of Hell. All along the
roadside are smoothed and polished hummocks of rock, most of them deeply
furrowed with approximately parallel striae, presenting a gentle slope on
the upper end, and a steep side below, clearly showing the direction of
the great ice flow.

Many of the upper Swiss valleys contain lakes, as, for instance, that of
the Upper Rhone, the Lake of Geneva, of the Reuss, the Lake of Lucerne,
of the Rhine,