d now form but one. Indeed, we have ample traditional
evidence of the oscillations of glacier-boundaries in recent times. When
I was engaged in the investigation of this subject, I sought out all the
chronicles kept in old convents or libraries which might throw any light
upon it. Among other records, I chanced upon the following, which may
have some interest for the historian as well as the geologist.

During the religious wars of the sixteenth century, when the Catholics
gained the ascendancy in the Canton of Valais, the inhabitants of the
upper valleys adhered to the Protestant faith. Shut out from ordinary
communication with the Protestant churches by the Bernese Oberland, the
account states that these peasants braved every obstacle to the exercise
of their religion, and used to carry their children over a certain road
by the valley of Viesch, across the Alps, to be baptized at Grindelwald,
on the farther side of the glaciers of Aletsch and Viesch. I could not
understand this statement, for no such road exists, or could be
conceived possible at present; nor was there any knowledge of it among
the guides, intimate as they are with every feature of the region.
Impressed, however, with the idea that there must be some foundation for
the statement, I carefully examined the ground, and, penetrating under
the glacier of Aletsch, I actually found, a number of feet below the
present level of the ice, the paved road along which these hardy people
travelled to church with their children, and some traces of which are
still visible. It has been almost completely buried, although here and
there it reappears; but at this day it is completely impassable for
ordinary travel.

Evidence of a like character is found in a number of facts cited by
Venetz in his celebrated paper upon the variations of temperature in the
Swiss Alps, drawn from the parish and commune registers of the Canton of
Valais. Among these are acts concerning the right to roads which are now
either entirely hidden by ice, or rendered nearly useless by the advance
of the glacier, a lawsuit respecting the use of a forest which no longer
exists, but the site of which is covered by a glacier, and other records
of a similar character. The only document, so far as I know, previous to
this century, which furnishes the means of delineating with any accuracy
the former boundary of a glacier, is a topographical plan of the
environs of the Grimsel, including the extremity of t