impression of infinite thickness and firmness. A little
water stood on it, near the threshold, so limpid that we could not see
where it commenced. The base of this triangular floor we found to be 17
feet, and its altitude 30 feet; and though these dimensions may seem
comparatively small, the whole effect of the thick mass of ice on which
we stood, with the cascades of ice in the corners, and the ice-figures
on the walls, and the three sides of the cave passing up into sheer
darkness, was exceedingly striking, situated, as it all was, so deep
down in the bowels of the earth. The original entrance to the fissure,
at the top of the _cheminee_, was, as has been said, at the base of
lofty rocks, and we had descended very considerably from the entrance;
so that, even without the strange light thrown upon the matter by the
small hole overhead, through which we had seen the day struggling to
force its way into the cavern, we should have been sure that we were now
at an immense distance below the surface. One corner of the cave was
occupied by a broad and solid-looking cascade, while another corner
showed the opening of a very narrow fissure, curved like one of the
shell-shaped crevasses of a glacier. Into this fissure the ice-floor
streamed; and Rosset held my coat-tails while I made a few steps down
the stream, when the fall became too rapid for further voluntary
progress. I let down a stone for 18 feet, when it stuck fast, and would
move neither one way nor the other. The upper wall of this fissure was
clothed with moss-like ice, and ice of the prismatic structure,--with
here and there large scythe-blades, as it were, attached by the sharp
edge to the rock, and lying vertically with the heel outwards. One of
these was 11 inches deep, from the heel to the rock, and only one-eighth
of an inch thick at the thickest part.

The angle occupied by the cascade or column was the most striking. The
base of the column was large, and apparently solid, like a smooth
unbroken waterfall suddenly frozen. It fitted into the angle of the
cave, and completely filled up the space between the contiguous walls. I
commenced to chop with my axe, and before long found that this ice was
hollow, though very thick; and when a sufficient hole was made for me to
get through, I saw that what had looked like a column was in truth only
a curtain of ice hung across the angle of the cave. Within the curtain
the ice-floor still went on, streaming down at last in