Ice-Caves of France and SwitzerlandBrowne, G. F. (George Forrest)
Science
Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland
Browne, G. F. (George Forrest)
Ice caves
We started southwards from the Glacière of _Grand Anu_, for such they
said was the proper name for the cave last described, and passed over
some of the wildest walking I have seen. All the most striking features
of a glacier were here reproduced in stone: now narrow deep crevasses
which only required a slight spring; now much more formidable rents,
which we were obliged to circumvent by a détour; now dark mysterious
holes with vertical shell-like partitions at various depths; and now a
perfect _moulin_, with fluted sides and every detail appertaining to
those remarkable pits, the hollow plunge of falling water alone
excepted. In other parts, the smooth slab-like appearance of the surface
reminded me of a curious district on one of the summits of the Jura,
where the French frontier takes the line of crest, and the old stones
marked with the _fleur-de-lys_ and the Helvetic cross are still to be
found. In those border regions the old historic distinctions are still
remembered, and the frontier Vaudois call the neighbouring French
_Bourguignons_--or, in their patois, _Borgognons_. They keep up the
tradition of old hatreds; and the strange bleak summit, with its smooth
slabs of Jura-chalk lying level with the surface, is so much like a vast
cemetery, that the wish in old times has been father to the thought, and
they call it still the Cemetery of the Burgundians, _Cimetiros ai
Borgognons_.[73]
After a time, we reached a tumbled chaos of rock, much resembling the
ice-fall of a glacier, and, on descending, and rounding a low spur of
the mountain so as to take a north-westerly course, we found ourselves
in a perfect paradise of flowers. One orchis I shall always regret.
There seemed to be only a single head, closely packed with flowerets,
and strongly scented; it was a pure white, not the green and
straw-coloured white of other scented orchises. There were large patches
of the delicate _faux-lis (Paradisia liliastrum)_; and though there
might not be anything very rare, and the lovely glacier-flowers were of
course wanting, the whole was a rich feast for anyone who cares more for
delicacy and colour than for botany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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