The driver had long ago absconded when I returned to the upper regions; but the wife of the farmer of the grotto was there, and communicated all that she knew of the statistics of the ice annually removed. She said that in 1863 two chars were loaded every day for two months, each char taking about 600 kilos, the wholesale price in Besançon being 5 francs the hundred kilos. Since the quintal contains 50 kilos, it will be seen that this account does not agree with the statement of Renaud as to the amount of ice each char could take. No doubt, a char at S. Georges may mean one thing, and a char in the village of Chaux another; but the difference between 12 quintaux and 50 or 60 is too great to be thus explained, and probably Madame Briot made some mistake. Her husband, Louis Briot, works alone in the cave, and has twelve men and a donkey to carry the ice he quarries to the village of Chaux, a mile from the glacière, where it is loaded for conveyance to Besançon. He uses gunpowder for the flooring of ice, and expects the eighth part of a pound to blow out a cubic metre; and if, by ill luck, the ice thus procured has stones on the lower side, he has to saw off the bottom layer. Madame Briot said I was right in supposing March to be the great time for the formation of ice, as she had heard her husband say that the columns were higher then than at any other time of the year: she also confirmed my views as to the disastrous effects of heavy rain. As with every other glacière of which I could obtain any account, excepting the Lower Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres, she complained that the ice had not been so beautiful and so abundant this year as last, although the winter had been exceptionally severe. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 26: Jean Bontemps, Conseiller au bailliage d'Arbois.] [Footnote 27: 'Allez vous en reposer, rafraischir et boire un coup au chasteau, car vous en avez bon besoin; j'ay du vin d'Arbois en mes offices, dont je vous envoyeray deux bouteilles, car je scay bien que vous ne le hayés pas.'--_Petitot_. iii. 9.] [Footnote 28: Mém. de la Comté de Bourgougne, Dôle, 1592, p. 486.] [Footnote 29: One of the Seigneurs de Chissey, Michaud de Changey, who died in high office in 1480, was known by preeminence as _le Brave_.] [Footnote 30: Dr. Buckland visited these caves in 1826, to look for bones, of which he found a great number. Gollut (in 1592) spelled the name _Aucelle_, and derived it from _Auricella_, believing that the Romans worked a gold mine there. It is certain that both the Doubs and the Loue supplied very fine gold, and the Seigneurs of Longwy had a chain made of the gold of those rivers, which weighed 160 crowns.] [Footnote 31: Dion Cass. lib. lxiii.] [Footnote 32: Ib. lib. lxvi.] [Footnote 33: Known locally as the _Porte Noire_, like the great _Porta Nigra_ at Treves, and other Roman gates in Gaul.]