ny great amount of fresh
ice. The slope of the whole ice-floor is considerable, and the workmen
increased the slope by cutting away the ice in the neighbourhood of the
edge of the _moulin_: they had also, as we could see quite plainly,
excavated the clearer parts of the ice between the entrance to the cave
and the _moulin_, so that a sort of trough ran down from near the foot
of the snow to the pit at the lower end of the glaciere. When we were
there, the water rushed down this trough, and was lost in the pit; and
very probably the same may have been the case in the earlier parts of
the year, when, according to the view I have already expressed, the ice
would under ordinary circumstances have been formed. If this be so, the
caverns below must have received immense additions to their stores of
ice or water. We observed, by the way, that the slope of ice to which
the candle descended in the deeper pit, and the shelf on which it
rested, were quite dry, or at any rate free from all apparent signs of
the abundant water we should have seen, had that been the outlet for the
streams which poured into the _moulin_. The maire said that the columns
and cascades of ice in the cave had been much more beautiful in the
previous summer.

The whole cavern would thus appear to be something of the shape of an
egg, with the longer axis vertical, and the entrance about half-way up
the side. The lower end of this egg-shaped cavity in the rock is filled
with ice, which in some parts shrinks from the rock below the surface,
though, as far as outward appearance goes, it fills the cavern to its
farthest corners. The depth of this ice at one side is 60 feet, and how
much more it may be in the middle it is impossible to say. As we have
seen, there is a second ice-cave opening out of the principal one, at a
depth of 190 feet below the surface; and with respect to this second
cave imagination may run riot. Rosset told me that he had noticed, the
year before, a strong source of water springing out of the side of a
rock, at some little distance from the glaciere; but he could not reach
it then, and could not find it now. This may possibly be the drainage of
the glaciere in its summer state.

The thermometer stood at 34 deg. in the middle of the cave; and though the
others felt the cold very much, I was myself surprised to find so low a
register, for the atmosphere seemed to be comparatively warm, judging
from what I had experienced in other glacieres