the beautiful barometer you gave me has been my faithful companion
in the Alps. . .I have the pleasure to tell you that the King of
Prussia has made me a handsome gift of nearly 200 pounds for the
continuance of my glacial work. I feel, therefore, the greater
certainty of completing what remains for me to do. . .
The campaign of 1842 opened on the 4th of July. The boulder had
ceased to be a safe shelter, and was replaced by a rough frame
cabin covered with canvas. If the party had some regrets in leaving
their picturesque hut beneath the rock, the greater comfort of the
new abode consoled them. It had several divisions. A sleeping-place
for the guides and workmen was partitioned off from a middle room
occupied by Agassiz and his friends, while the front space served
as dining-room, sitting-room, and laboratory. This outer apartment
boasted a table and one or two benches; even a couple of chairs
were kept as seats of honor for occasional guests. A shelf against
the wall and a few pegs accommodated books, instruments, coats,
etc., and a plank floor, on which to spread their blankets at
night, was a good exchange for the frozen surface of the glacier.*
(* In bidding farewell to the boulder which had been the first
"Hotel des Neuchatelois" we may add a word of its farther fortunes.
It had begun to split in 1841, and was completely rent asunder in
1844, after which frost and rain completed its dismemberment.
Strange to say, during the last summer (1884) certain fragments of
the mass have been found, inscribed with the names of some of the
party; one of the blocks bearing beside names, the mark "Number 2".
The account says "The middle stone, the one numbered 2, was at the
intersecting point of two lines drawn from the Pavilion Dollfuss to
the Scheuchzerhorn on the one part, and from the Rothhorn to the
Thierberg on the other." According to the measurements taken by
Agassiz, the Hotel des Neuchatelois in 1840 stood at 797 metres
from the promontory of Abschwung. We are thus enabled, by referring
to the large glacier map of Wild and Stengel, to compare the
present with the then position of the stone, and thereby ascertain
the progress of the glacier since the time in question. Thus the
boulder still contributes something toward the sequel of the work
begun by those who once found shelter beneath it.--E.C.A.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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