the existence of a _glaciere_ at no great
distance, and talked of taking us to see it; but we were sceptical on
the subject, imagining that _glaciere_ was his patois for _glacier_, and
knowing that anything of the glacier kind was out of the question. At
last, however, on a hot day in August, we set off with him, armed, at
his request, with candles; and, after two or three hours of pine
forests, and grass glades, and imaginary paths up rocky ranges of hill
towards the summits of the Jura, we came to a deep natural pit, down the
side of which we scrambled. At the bottom, after penetrating a few yards
into a chasm in the rock, we discovered a small low cave, perfectly
dark, with a flooring of ice, and a pillar of the same material in the
form of a headless woman, one of whose shoulders we eventually carried
off, to regale our parched friends at Arzier. We lighted up the cave
with candles, and sat crouched on the ice drinking our wine, finding
water, which served the double purpose of icing and diluting the wine,
in small basins in the floor of ice, formed apparently by drops falling
from the roof of the cave.

A few days after, our guide and companion took us to an ice-cavern on a
larger scale, which, we were told, supplies Geneva with ice when the
ordinary stores of that town fail; and the next year my sisters went to
yet another, where, however, they did not reach the ice, as the ladder
necessary for the final drop was not forthcoming.

In the course of the last year or two, I have mentioned these glacieres
now and then in England, and no one has seemed to know anything about
them; so I determined, in the spring of 1864, to spend a part of the
summer in examining the three we had already seen or heard of, and
discovering, if possible, the existence of similar caves.

The first that came under my notice was the Glaciere of La Genolliere;
and, though it is smaller and less interesting than most of those which
I afterwards visited, many of its general features are merely reproduced
on a larger scale in them. I shall therefore commence with this cave,
and proceed with the account of my explorations in their natural order.
It is probable that some of the earlier details may seem to be somewhat
tedious, but they are necessary for a proper understanding of the
subject.

La Genolliere is the _montagne_, or mountain pasturage and wood,
belonging to the village of Genollier, an ancient priory of the monks of
S. Claude.[1] The