345. What is their origin? The Arctic glaciers. From the mountains in the interior the indurated snows slide into the valleys and fill them with ice. The glaciers thus formed move like the Swiss ones, incessantly downward. But the Arctic glaciers reach the sea, enter it, often ploughing up its bottom into submarine moraines. Undermined by the lapping of the waves, and unable to resist the strain imposed by their own weight, they break across, and discharge vast masses into the ocean. Some of these run aground on the adjacent shores, and often maintain themselves for years. Others escape southward, to be finally dissolved in the warm waters of the Atlantic. The first engraving on the opposite page is copied from a photograph taken by Mr. Bradford during a recent expedition to the Northern seas. The second represents a mass of ice upon the Glacier des Bossons. Their likeness suggests their common origin. [Illustration] [Illustration] § 50. _The Æggischhorn, the Märgelin See and its Icebergs._ 346. I am, however, unwilling that you should quit Switzerland without seeing such icebergs as it can show, and indeed there are other still nobler glaciers than the Mer de Glace with which you ought to be acquainted. In tracing the Rhone to its source, you have already ascended the valley of the Rhone. Let us visit it again together; halt at the little town of Viesch, and go from it straight up to the excellent hostelry on the slope of the Æggischhorn. This we shall make our head-quarters while we explore that monarch of European ice-streams,--the great Aletsch glacier. 347. Including the longest of its branches, this noble ice-river is about twenty miles long, while at the middle of its trunk it measures nearly a mile and a quarter from side to side. The grandest mountains of the Bernese Oberland, the Jungfrau, the Monch, the Trugberg, the Aletschhorn, the Breithorn, the Gletscherhorn, and many another noble peak and ridge, are the collectors of its névés. From three great valleys formed in the heart of the mountains these névés are poured, uniting together to form the trunk of the Aletsch at a place named by a witty mountaineer, the "Place de la Concorde of Nature." If the phrase be meant to convey the ideas of tranquil grandeur, beauty of form, and purity of hue, it is well bestowed. 348. Our hotel is not upon the peak of the Æggischhorn, but a brisk morning walk soon places us upon the top. Thence we see the glacier like a broad river stretching upwards to the roots of the Jungfrau, and downwards past the Bel Alp towards its end. Prolonging the vision downwards, we strike the noblest mountain group in all the Alps,--the Dom and its attendant peaks, the Matterhorn and the Weisshorn. The scene indeed is one of impressive grandeur, a multitude of peaks and crests here unnamed contributing to its glory.