In 1188 John of Bremble, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, visited the Great St. Bernard Pass. He wrote about it as follows to his sub-prior, Geoffrey, and gave expression to what Gribble correctly calls the “normal medieval view of mountains:”[1001] “I have been on the Mount of Jove; on the one hand looking up to the heaven of mountains, on the other shuddering at the hell of the valleys, feeling myself so much nearer heaven that I was sure that my prayer would be heard. ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘restore me to my brethren, that I may tell them that they come not to this place of torment.’ Place of torment, indeed, where the marble pavement of the stony ground is ice alone, and you cannot set your foot safely; where, strange to say, although it is so slippery that you cannot stand, the death into which there is every facility for a fall is certain death” (Gribble’s translation). GLACIERS As a general rule the medieval traveler took no interest in glaciers. Journeys across the Alps were such hazardous undertakings that even the traveler of scientific tastes could have had little opportunity or inclination to investigate the phenomena of the ice. A passage in the _Gesta Danorum_ of Saxo Grammaticus, therefore, is doubly remarkable because it gives us some specific details regarding the glaciers of Iceland. After speaking of the ice floes breaking on the shore, Saxo writes: “There is also there another type of ice which runs between the rocks and passes of the mountains. This undergoes certain changes: it is subject to a process of transposition in which the upper parts sink down to the bottom and the lower parts arise to the surface. It is reliably asserted that persons who happened to be passing over the flat surface of the ice have fallen into crevasses and gaping fissures and that, soon after, their dead bodies have been recovered without a trace of ice above them. This circumstance has led many people to believe that whomsoever the icy caldron takes into its lowest depths, it will deliver again shortly after upside down.”[1002] Though this passage shows that Saxo did not have a clear conception of what he was trying to describe, it was certainly based upon some knowledge, though slight, of glacial phenomena. It is a well-known fact that on its arrival at the lower portion of a glacier, ice that at higher elevations was at the bottom often comes to the surface and brings with it materials scraped from the glacial bed or objects that may have fallen into the crevasses. This passage of Saxo has been cited as the earliest occasion in literature in which the motion of glacial ice was recognized.[1003] _VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES_ VISITS TO VOLCANOES