The existence of natural ice-caves at depths varying from 50 to 200 feet below the surface of the earth, unconnected with glaciers or snow mountains, and in latitudes and at altitudes where ice could not under ordinary circumstances be supposed to exist, has attracted some attention on the Continent; but little or nothing seems to be practically known in England on the subject. These caves are so singular, and many of them so well repay inspection, that a description of the twelve which I have v

In the summer of 1861, I found myself, with some members of my family, in a small rustic pension in the village of Arzier, one of the highest villages of the pleasant slope by which the Jura passes down to the Lake of Geneva. The son of the house was an intelligent man, with a good knowledge of the natural curiosities which abound in that remarkable range of hills, and under his guidance we saw many strange things. More than once, he spoke of the existence of a glacière at no great distance, and

The best way of reaching this glacière from Geneva would be to take the steamer to Rolle, or the train to one of the neighbouring stations, between Geneva and Lausanne, and thence pass up the slope of the Jura by the road which leads through Gimel. For the train, the Allaman station would be the most convenient, as an omnibus runs from Allaman to Aubonne, where the poste for Gimel may be caught. But from Arzier there is a short cut of less than two hours along the side of the hills, leaving that

I had intended to walk on from S. Georges to Bière, after returning from the glacière last described, and thence, the next morning, to the Pré de S. Livres, the mountain pasturage of the commune of S. Livres, [18] a village near Aubonne. But Renaud advised a change of plan, and the result showed that his advice was good. He said that the fermier of the Glacière of S. Livres generally lived in S. Georges, and, if he were at home, would be the best guide to the glacière; while the distance from S.

We now put ourselves under the guidance of the accomplice, Louis, who began to express doubts of his ability to find the upper glacière, administering consolation by reminding us that if he could not find it no one else could. As we walked on through the mist and rain, it became necessary to circumvent a fierce-looking bull, and Mignot and the accomplice told rival tales of the dangers to which pedestrians are exposed from the violence of the cattle on some montagnes, where the bulls are allowed

The grand and lovely scenery of the Val de Travers has at length been opened up for the ordinary tourist world, by the railway which connects Pontarlier with Neufchâtel. The beauties of the valley are an unfortunate preparation for the dull expanse of ugly France which greets the traveller passing north from the former town; but the country soon assumes a pleasanter aspect, and nothing can be more charming than the soft green slopes, dotted with the richest pines, which form the approach to the

The afternoon was so far advanced when I returned to the convent, that it was clearly impossible to reach Besançon at five o'clock, and consequently there was time to inspect the Brothers and their buildings. The field near the convent was gay with haymakers; and the brown monks, with here and there a priest in ci-devant white, moved among the hired labourers, and stirred them up by exhortation and example,--with this difference, that while it was evidently the business of the monks so to do, th

I rejoined my sisters at Neufchâtel on the 5th of July, and proceeded thence with them by the line which passes through the Val de Travers. One of them had been at Fleurier, in 1860, on the day of the opening of this line, and she added an interest to the various tunnels, by telling us that a Swiss gentleman of her acquaintance, who had taken a place in one of the open carriages of the first train, found, on reaching the daylight after one of the tunnels, that his neighbour had been killed by a

The beauties of the Val de Travers end only with the valley itself, at the head of which a long tunnel ushers the traveller into a tamer country,--a preparation, as it were, for France. After the border is passed, the scenery begins to improve again, and the effect of the two castles of Joux, the new and the old, crowning the heights on either side of the narrow gorge through which the railway runs, is very fine. The guide-books inform us that the Château of Joux was the place of imprisonment of

The next morning, my sisters went one way and I another; they to a valley in the south-west of Vaud, where our head-quarters were to be established for some weeks, and I to Soleure, where a Swiss savant had vaguely told us he believed there was a glacière to be seen. That town, however, denied the existence of any approach to such a thing, with a unanimity which in itself was suspicious, and with a want of imagination which I had not expected to find. One man I really thought might be persuaded

M. Thury's list contained a bare mention of two glacières on the M. Parmelan, near Annecy, without any further information respecting them, beyond the fact that they supplied ice for Lyons. Their existence had been apparently reported to him by M. Alphonse Favre, but he had obtained no account of a visit to the caves. Under these circumstances, the only plan was to go to Annecy, and trust to chance for finding some one there who could assist me in my search. After spending a day or two in the li

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 mo

The bill à la Parfaite Union was as small as the accommodation at that auberge , and it was an immense relief to get away from the scene of my sufferings. The path to Bonneville lies for the earlier part of the way through pleasant scenery; and when the highest ground is reached, there is a lovely view of the Lake of Geneva, which may be enjoyed under the cool shade of a high hedge of trees, in the intervals of browsing upon wild strawberries. But after passing the curious old town of La Roche,

The Chanoine Carrel, of Aosta, whose name is so well and so favourably known to Alpine men, sent a brief account of an ice-cave in his neighbourhood to the Bibliothèque Universelle of Geneva [81] in the year 1841, and, as far as I know, there is no other account of it. My plan had been to pass from Chamouni by the Col du Géant to Courmayeur, and thence to Aosta for a visit to the canon and his glacière; but, unfortunately, the symptoms which had put an end to the expedition to the Brezon and the

There cannot be any better place for recruiting strength than the lovely primitive valley of Les Plans , two hours up the course of the Avençon from hot and dusty Bex. Here I rejoined my sisters, intending to spend a month with them before returning to England; and the neighbouring glaciers afforded good opportunities for quietly investigating the structure of the ice which composes them, with a view to discovering, if possible, some trace of the prismatic formation so universal in the glacières

Matthew Bell, the historian of Hungary, sent an account of this cavern to England, in the middle of the last century, which was printed in the original Latin in the 'Philosophical Transactions' of 1739-40 (pp. 41, &c.). This account states that the cave is in the county of Thorn, [99] among the lowest spurs of the Carpathians. The entrance, which faces the north, and is exposed to the cold winds from the snowy part of the Carpathian range, is 18 fathoms high and 9 broad; and the cave spr

On the Brandstein in Styria, in the district of Gems, there is an ice-hole closely resembling some of the glacières of the Jura. It is described by Sartori, [123] as lying in a much-fissured region, reached after four hours of steep ascent from the neighbouring village, through a forest of fir. Some of the fissures contain water and some snow, while others are apparently unfathomable. From one of the largest of these, a strong and cold current blows in summer, and in this fissure is the ice-hole

The only glacière which is in any sense historical, is that near Besançon; and a brief account of the different theories which have been advanced in explanation of the phenomena presented by it, will include almost all that has been written on ice-caves. The first mention I have found of this cave is contained in an old history of the Franche Comté of Burgundy, published at Dôle in 1592, to which reference has been already made. Gollut, the author, speaks more than once of a glacière in his topo

It was natural to suppose that the prismatic structure which I found so very general in the glacières was the result of some cause or causes coming into operation after the first formation of the ice. On this point M. Thury's visit to the Glacière of S. Georges in the spring of 1852 affords valuable information, for at that time the coating of ice on the wall, evidently newly formed, did not present the structure aréolaire which he had observed in his summer visit to the cave. He suggests that,

Many interesting experiments have for long been carried on with a view to determine the mean temperature at various depths below the surface of the earth. The construction of Artesian wells has afforded useful opportunities for increasing the amount of our knowledge on this subject; and the well at Pregny, near Geneva, [211] and the Monk Wearmouth coal-mines, as observed by Professor Phillips while a fresh shaft was being sunk, [212] have supplied most valuable facts. Without entering into any d