Chapter 10: 1840-1842: Aet. 33-35.
- Summer station on the glacier of the Aar. -- Hotel des Neuchatelois. -- members of the party. -- work on the glacier. -- ascent of the Strahleck and the Siedelhorn. -- visit to England. -- search for glacial remains in great Britain. -- Roads of Glen Roy. -- views of English naturalists concerning Agassiz's glacial theory. -- letter from Humboldt. -- winter visit to glacier. -- summer of 1841 on the glacier. -- descent into the glacier. -- ascent of the Jungfrau.
In the summer of 1840 Agassiz made his first permanent station on the Alps. Hitherto the external phenomena, the relation of the ice to its surroundings, and its influence upon them, had been the chief study. Now the glacier itself was to be the main subject of investigation, and he took with him a variety of instruments for testing temperatures: barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, and psychometers; beside a boring apparatus, by means of which self-registering thermometers might be lowered into the heart of the glacier. To these were added microscopes for the study of [299] such insects and plants as might be found in these ice-bound regions. The Hospice of the Grimsel was selected as his base of supplies, and as guides Jacob Leuthold and Johann Wahren were chosen. Both of these had accompanied Hugi in his ascension of the Finsteraarhorn in 1828, and both were therefore thoroughly familiar with all the dangers of Alpine climbing. The lower Aar glacier was to be the scene of their continuous work, and the centre from which their ascents of the neighboring summits would be made. Here, on the great median moraine, stood a huge boulder of micaceous schist. Its upper surface projected so as to form a roof, and by closing it in on one side with a stone wall, leveling the floor by a judicious arrangement of flat slabs, and rigging a blanket in front to serve as a curtain across the entrance, the whole was presently transformed into a rude hut, where six persons could find sleeping-room. A recess, sheltered by the rock outside, served as kitchen and dining-room; while an empty space under another large boulder was utilized as a cellar for the keeping of provisions. This was the abode so well known afterward as the Hotel des Neuchatelois. Its first occupants were Louis Agassiz, Edouard [300] Desor, Charles Vogt, Francois de Pourtales, Celestin Nicolet, and Henri Coulon. It afforded, perhaps, as good a shelter as they could have found in the old cabin of Hugi, where they had hoped to make their temporary home. In this they were disappointed, for the cabin had crumbled on its last glacial journey. The wreck was lying two hundred feet below the spot where they had seen the walls still standing the year before.
The work was at once distributed among the different members of the party,—Agassiz himself, assisted by his young friend and favorite pupil, Francois de Pourtales, retaining for his own share the meteorological observations, and especially those upon the internal temperature of the glaciers.1 To M. Vogt fell the microscopic study of the red snow and the organic life contained in it; to M. Nicolet, the flora of the glaciers and the surrounding rocks; to M. Desor, the glacial phenomena proper, including those of the moraines. He had the companionship and assistance [301] of M. Henri Coulon in the long and laborious excursions required for this part of the work.
This is not the place for scientific details. For the results of Agassiz's researches on the Alpine glaciers, to which he devoted much of his time and energy during ten years, from 1836 to 1846, the reader is referred to his two larger works on this subject, the ‘Etudes sur les Glaciers,’ and the ‘Systeme Glaciaire.’ Of the work accomplished by him and his companions during these years this slight summary is given by his friend Guyot.2 ‘The position of eighteen of the most prominent rocks on the glacier was determined by careful triangulation by a skillful engineer, and measured year after year to establish the rate of motion of every part. The differences in the rate of motion in the upper and lower part of the glacier, as well as in different seasons of the year, was ascertained; the amount of the annual melting was computed, and all the phenomena connected with it studied. All the surrounding peaks,—the Jungfrau, the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, most of them [302] until then reputed unscalable,—were ascended, and the limit of glacial action discovered; in short all the physical laws of the glacier were brought to light.’
We now return to the personal narrative. After a number of days spent in the study of the local phenomena, the band of workers turned their attention to the second part of their programme, namely, the ascent of the Strahleck, by crossing which and descending on the other side, they intended to reach Grindelwald. One morning, then, toward the end of August, their guides, according to agreement, aroused them at three o'clock,—an hour earlier than their usual roll-call. The first glance outside spread a general chill of disappointment over the party, for they found themselves beleaguered by a wall of fog on every side. But Leuthold, as he lighted the fire and prepared breakfast, bade them not despair,—the sun might make all right. In a few moments, one by one, the summits of the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, the Oberaarhorn, the Altmaner, the Scheuchzerhorn, lighted by the first rays of the sun, came out like islands above the ocean of mist, which softly broke away and vanished with the advancing light. In about three hours they [303] reached the base of the Strahleck. Their two guides, Leuthold and Wahren, had engaged three additional men for this excursion, so that they now had five guides, none of whom were superfluous, since they carried with them various barometric instruments which required careful handling. They began the ascent in single file, but the slopes soon became so steep and the light snow (in which they floundered to the knees at every step) so deep, that the guides resorted to the usual method in such cases of tying them all together. The two head guides alone, Leuthold and Wahren, remained detached, clearing the snow in front of them, cutting steps in the ice, and giving warning, by cry and gesture, of any hidden danger in the path. At nine o'clock, after an hour's climbing, they stepped upon the small plateau, evenly covered with unbroken snow, formed by the summit of the Strahleck.
The day had proved magnificent. With a clear sky above them, they looked down upon the valley of Grindelwald at their feet, while around and below them gathered the Scheideck and the Faulhorn, the pyramidal outline of the Niesen, and the chain of the Stockhorn. In front lay the great masses of the Eiger and the Monch, while to the southwest [304] the Jungfrau rose above the long chain of the Viescherhorner. The first pause of silent wonder and delight, while they released themselves from their cords and arranged their instruments, seems to have been succeeded by an outburst of spirits; for in the journal of the youngest of the party, Francois de Pourtales, then a lad of seventeen, we read: ‘The guides began to wrestle and we to dance, when suddenly we saw a female chamois, followed by her young, ascending a neighboring slope, and presently four or five more stretched their necks over a rock, as if to see what was going on. Breathless the wrestlers and the dancers paused, fearing to disturb by the slightest movement creatures so shy of human approach. They drew nearer until within easy gunshot distance, and then galloping along the opposite ridge disappeared over the summit.’
The party passed more than an hour on the top of the Strahleck, making observations and taking measurements. Then having rested and broken their fast with such provisions as they had brought, they prepared for a descent, which proved the more rapid, since much of it was a long slide. Tied together once more, they slid, wherever they found it possible to exchange the painful and difficult walking [305] for this simpler process. ‘Once below these slopes of snow,’ says the journal of young de Pourtales again, ‘rocks almost vertical, or narrow ledges covered with grass, served us as a road and brought us to the glacier of the Grindelwald. To reach the glacier itself we traversed a crevasse of great depth, and some twenty feet wide, on a bridge of ice, one or two feet in width, and broken toward the end, where we were obliged to spring across. Once on the glacier the rest was nothing. The race was to the fastest, and we were soon on the path of the tourists.’ Reaching the village of Grindelwald at three o'clock in the afternoon, they found it difficult to persuade the people at the inn that they had left the glacier of the Aar that morning. From Grindelwald they returned by the Scheideck to the Grimsel, visiting on their way the upper glacier of Grindelwald, the glacier of Schwartzwald, and that of Rosenlaui, in order to see how far these had advanced since their last visit to them. After a short rest at the Hospice of the Grimsel, Agassiz returned with two or three of his companions to their hut on the Aar glacier for the purpose of driving stakes into the holes previously bored in the ice. He hoped by means of these stakes to learn the following [306] year what had been the rate of movement of the glacier. The summer's work closed with the ascent of the Siedelhorn. In all these ascents, the utmost pains was taken to ascertain how far the action of the ice might be traced upon these mountain peaks and the limits determined at which the polished surfaces ceased, giving place to the rough, angular rock which had never been modeled by the ice.
Agassiz had hardly returned from the Alps when he started for England. He had long believed that the Highlands of Scotland, the hilly Lake Country of England, and the mountains of Wales and Ireland, would present the same phenomena as the valleys of the Alps. Dr. Buckland had offered to be his guide in this search after glacier tracks, as he had formerly been in the hunt after fossil fishes in Great Britain. When, therefore, the meeting of the British Association at Glasgow, at which they were both present, was over, they started together for the Highlands. In a lecture delivered by Agassiz, at his summer school at Penikese, a few months before his death, he recurred to this journey with the enthusiasm of a young man. Recalling the scientific isolation in which he then stood, opposed [307] as he was to all the prominent geologists of the day, he said: ‘Among the older naturalists, only one stood by me. Dr. Buckland, Dean of Westminster, who had come to Switzerland at my urgent request for the express purpose of seeing my evidence, and who had been fully convinced of the ancient extension of ice there, consented to accompany me on my glacier hunt in Great Britain. We went first to the Highlands of Scotland, and it is one of the delightful recollections of my life that as we approached the castle of the Duke of Argyll, standing in a valley not unlike some of the Swiss valleys, I said to Buckland: “Here we shall find our first traces of glaciers;” and, as the stage entered the valley, we actually drove over an ancient terminal moraine, which spanned the opening of the valley.’ In short, Agassiz found, as he had anticipated, that in the mountains of Scotland, Wales, and the north of England, the valleys were in many instances traversed by terminal moraines and bordered by lateral ones, as in Switzerland. Nor were any of the accompanying phenomena wanting. The characteristic traces left by the ice, as well known to him now as the track of the game to the hunter; the peculiar lines, furrows, [308] and grooves; the polished surfaces, the roches moutonees; the rocks, whether hard or soft, cut to one level, as by a rigid instrument; the unstratified drift and the distribution of loose material in relation to the ancient glacier-beds,—all agreed with what he already knew of glacial action. He visited the famous ‘roads of Glen Roy’ in the Grampian Hills, where so many geologists had broken a lance in defense of their theories of subsidence and upheaval, of ancient ocean-levels and sea-beaches, formed at a time when they believed Glen Roy and the adjoining valleys to have been so many fiords and estuaries. To Agassiz, these parallel terraces explained themselves as the shores of a glacial lake, held back in its bed for a time by neighboring glaciers descending from more sheltered valleys. The terraces marked the successively lower levels at which the water stood, as these barriers yielded, and allowed its gradual escape.3 The glacial action in the whole neighborhood was such as to leave no doubt in the mind of [309] Agassiz that Glen Roy and the adjoining glens, or valleys, had been the drainage-bed for the many glaciers formerly occupying the western ranges of the Grampian Hills. He returned from his tour satisfied that the mountainous districts of Great Britain had all been centres of glacial distribution, and that the drift material and the erratic boulders, scattered over the whole country, were due to exactly the same causes as the like phenomena in Switzerland. On the 4th of November, 1840, he read a paper before the Geological Society of London, giving a summary of the scientific results of their excursion, followed by one from Dr. Buckland, who had become an ardent convert to his views. Apropos of this meeting, Dr. Buckland writes in advance as follows:—
A letter of later date in the same month [311] shows that Agassiz felt his views to be slowly gaining ground among his English friends.
[312]
We append here, a little out of the regular course, a letter from Humboldt, which shows that he too was beginning to look more leniently upon Agassiz's glacial conclusions.
[317]
In the following winter, or, rather, in the early days of March, 1841, Agassiz visited, in company with M. Desor, the glacier of the Aar and that of Rosenlaui. He wished to examine the stakes planted the summer before on the glacier of the Aar, and to compare the winter and summer temperature within as well as without the mass of ice. But his chief object was to ascertain whether water still flowed from beneath the glaciers during the frosts of winter. This fact would have a direct bearing upon the theory which referred the melting and movement of the glaciers chiefly to their lower surface, explaining them by the central heat of the earth as their main cause. Satisfied as he was of the fallacy of this notion, Agassiz still wished to have the evidence of the glacier itself. The journey was, of course, a difficult one at such a season, but the weather was beautiful, and they accomplished it in safety, though not without much suffering. They found no water except the pure and limpid water from springs that never freeze. The glacier lay dead in the grasp of winter. The results of this journey, tables of temperature, etc., are recorded in the ‘Systeme Glaciaire.’
In E. Desor's ‘Sejours dans les Glaciers’ [318] is found an interesting description of the incidents of this excursion and the appearance of the glaciers in winter. In ascending the course of the Aar they frequently crossed the shrunken river on natural snow bridges, and approaching the Handeck over fearfully steep slopes of snow they had some difficulty in finding the thread of water which was all that remained of the beautiful summer cascade. On the glacier of the Aar they found the Hotel des Neuchatelois buried in snow, while the whole surface of the glacier as well as the surrounding peaks, from base to summit, wore the same spotless mantle. The Finsteraarhorn alone stood out in bold relief, black against a white world, its abrupt slopes affording no foothold for the snow. The scene was far more monotonous than in summer. Crevasses, with their blue depths of ice, were closed; the many-voiced streams were still; the moraines and boulders were only here and there visible through the universal shroud. The sky was without a cloud, the air transparent, but the glitter of the uniform white surface was exquisitely painful to the eyes and skin, and the travelers were obliged to wrap their heads in double veils. They found the glacier of Rosenlaui less enveloped in [319] snow than that of the Aar; and though the magnificent ice-cave, so well known to travelers for its azure tints, was inaccessible, they could look into the vault and see that the habitual bed of the torrent was dry. The journey was accomplished in a week without any untoward accident.
In the summer of 1841 Agassiz made a longer Alpine sojourn than ever before. The special objects of the season's work were the internal structure of these vast moving fields of ice, the essential conditions of their origin and continued existence, the action of water within them as influencing their movement, and their own agency in direct contact with the beds and walls of the valleys they occupied. The fact of their former extension and their present oscillations might be considered as established. It remained to explain these facts with reference to the conditions prevailing within the mass itself. In short, the investigation was passing from the domain of geology to that of physics. Agassiz, who was as he often said of himself no physicist, was the more anxious to have the cooperation of the ablest men in that department, and to share with them such facilities for observation and such results as he had thus far accumulated. [320] In addition to his usual collaborators, M. Desor and M. Vogt, he had, therefore, invited as his guest, during part of the season, the distinguished physicist, Professor James D. Forbes, of Edinburgh, who brought with him his friend, Mr. Heath, of Cambridge.7 M. Escher de la Linth took also an active part in the work of the later summer. To his working corps Agassiz had added the foreman of M. Kahli, an engineer at Bienne, to whom he had confided his plans for the summer, and who furnished him with a skilled workman to direct the boring operations, assist in measurements, etc. The artist of this year was M. Jaques Burkhardt, a personal friend of Agassiz, and his fellow-student at Munich, where he had spent some time at the school of art. As a draughtsman he was subsequently associated with Agassiz in his work at various times, and when they both settled in America Mr. Burkhardt became a permanent member of Agassiz's household, accompanied him on his journeys, and remained with him in relations of uninterrupted and affectionate regard till his own death in 1867. He was a loyal friend [321] and a warm-hearted man, with a thread of humor running through his dry good sense, which made him a very amusing and attractive companion.
As it was necessary, in view of his special programme of work, to penetrate below the surface of the glacier, and reach, if possible, its point of contact with the valley bottom, Agassiz had caused a larger boring apparatus than had been used before, to be transported to the old site on the Aar glacier. The results of these experiments are incorporated in the ‘Systeme Glaciaire,’ published in 1846, with twenty-four folio plates and two maps. They were of the highest interest with reference to the internal structure and temperature of the ice and the penetrability of its mass, pervious throughout, as it proved, to air and water. On one occasion the boring-rod, having been driven to a depth of one hundred and ten feet, dropped suddenly two feet lower, showing that it had passed through an open space hidden in the depth of the ice. The release of air-bubbles at the same time gave evidence that this glacial cave, so suddenly broken in upon, was not hermetically sealed to atmospheric influences from without. [322]
Agassiz was not satisfied with the report of his instruments from these unknown regions. He determined to be lowered into one of the so-called wells in the glacier, and thus to visit its interior in person. For this purpose he was obliged to turn aside the stream which flowed into the well into a new bed which he caused to be dug for it. This done, he had a strong tripod erected over the opening, and, seated upon a board firmly attached by ropes, he was then let down into the well, his friend Escher lying flat on the edge of the precipice, to direct the descent and listen for any warning cry. Agassiz especially desired to ascertain how far the laminated or ribboned structure of the ice (the so-called blue bands) penetrated the mass of the glacier. This feature of the glacier had been observed and described by M. Guyot (see p. 292), but Mr. Forbes had called especial attention to it, as in his belief connected with the internal conditions of the glacier. It was agreed, as Agassiz bade farewell to his friends on this curious voyage of discovery, that he should be allowed to descend until he called out that they were to lift him. He was lowered successfully and without accident to a depth of eighty feet. There he encountered [323] an unforeseen difficulty in a wall of ice which divided the well into two compartments. He tried first the larger one, but finding it split again into several narrow tunnels, he caused himself to be raised sufficiently to enter the smaller, and again proceeded on his downward course without meeting any obstacle. Wholly engrossed in watching the blue bands, still visible in the glittering walls of ice, he was only aroused to the presence of approaching danger by the sudden plunge of his feet into water. His first shout of distress was misunderstood, and his friends lowered him into the ice-cold gulf instead of raising him. The second cry was effectual, and he was drawn up, though not without great difficulty, from a depth of one hundred and twenty-five feet. The most serious peril of the ascent was caused by the huge stalactites of ice, between the points of which he had to steer his way. Any one of them, if detached by the friction of the rope, might have caused his death. He afterward said: ‘Had I known all its dangers, perhaps I should not have started on such an adventure. Certainly, unless induced by some powerful scientific motive, I should not advise any one to follow my example.’ On this perilous journey he traced the laminated structure [324] to a depth of eighty feet, and even beyond, though with less distinctness.
The summer closed with their famous ascent of the Jungfrau. The party consisted of twelve persons: Agassiz, Desor, Forbes, Heath, and two travelers who had begged to join them,—M. de Chatelier, of Nantes, and M. de Pury, of Neuchatel, a former pupil of Agassiz. The other six were guides; four beside their old and tried friends, Jacob Leuthold and Johann Wahren. They left the hospice of the Grimsel on the 27th of August, at four o'clock in the morning. Crossing the Col of the Oberaar they descended to the snowy plateau which feeds the Viescher glacier. In this grand amphitheatre, walled in by the peaks of the Viescherhorner, they rested for their midday meal. In crossing these fields of snow, while walking with perfect security upon what seemed a solid mass, they observed certain window-like openings in the snow. Stooping to examine one of them, they looked into an immense open space, filled with soft blue light. They were, in fact, walking on a hollow crust, and the small window was, as they afterward found, opposite a large crevasse on the other side of this ice-cavern, through which the light entered, flooding [325] the whole vault and receiving from its icy walls its exquisite reflected color.8
Once across the fields of snow and neve, a fatiguing walk of five hours brought them to the chalets of Meril,9 where they expected to sleep. The night which should have prepared them for the fatigue of the next day was, however, disturbed by an untoward accident. The ladder left by Jacob Leuthold when last here with Hugi in 1832, nine years before, and upon which he depended, had been taken away by a peasant of Viesch. Two messengers were sent in the course of the night to the village to demand its restoration. The first returned unsuccessful; the second was the bearer of such threats of summary punishment from the whole party that he carried his point, and appeared at last with the recovered treasure on his back. They had, in the mean while, lost two hours. They should have been on their road at three o'clock; it was now five. Jacob warned them therefore that they must make all speed, and that any one who felt himself unequal to a forced [326] march should stay behind. No one responded to his suggestion, and they were presently on the road.
Passing Lake Meril, with its miniature icebergs, they reached the glacier of the Aletsch and its snow-fields, where the real difficulties and dangers of the ascent were to begin. In this great semicircular space, inclosed by the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the lesser peaks of this mountain group, lies the Aletsch reservoir of snow or neve. As this spot presented a natural pause between the laborious ascent already accomplished and the immense declivities which lay before them yet to be climbed, they named it Le Repos, and halted there for a short rest. Here they left also every needless incumbrance, taking only a little bread and wine, in case of exhaustion, some meteorological instruments, and the inevitable ladder, axe, and ropes of the Alpine climber. On their left, to the west of the amphitheatre, a vast passage opened between the Jungfrau and the Kranzberg, and in this could be distinguished a series of terraces, one above the other. The story is the usual one, of more or less steep slopes, where they sank in the softer snow or cut their steps in the icy surfaces; of open crevasses, crossed by the ladder, [327] or the more dangerous ones, masked by snow, over which they trod cautiously, tied together by the rope. But there was nothing to appall the experienced mountaineer with firm foot and a steady head, until they reached a height where the summit of the Jungfrau detached itself in apparently inaccessible isolation from all beneath or around it. To all but the guides their farther advance seemed blocked by a chaos of precipices, either of snow and ice or of rock. Leuthold remained however quietly confident, telling them he clearly saw the course he meant to follow. It began by an open gulf of unknown depth, though not too wide to be spanned by their ladder twenty-three feet in length. On the other side of this crevasse, and immediately above it, rose an abrupt wall of icy snow. Up this wall Leuthold and another guide led the way, cutting steps as they went. When half way up they lowered the rope, holding one end, while their companions fastened the other to the ladder, so that it served them as a kind of hand-rail, by which to follow. At the top they found themselves on a terrace, beyond which a far more moderate slope led to the Col of Roththal, overlooking the Aletsch valley on one side, the Roththal on the other. [328] From this point the ascent was more and more steep and very slow, as every step had to be cut. Their difficulties were increased, also, by a mist which gathered around them, and by the intense cold. Leuthold kept the party near the border of the ridge, because there the ice yielded more readily to the stroke of the axe; but it put their steadiness of nerve to the greatest test, by keeping the precipice constantly in view, except when hidden by the fog. Indeed, they could drive their alpenstocks through the overhanging rim of frozen snow, and look sheer down through the hole thus made to the amphitheatre below. One of the guides left them, unable longer to endure the sight of these precipices so close at hand. As they neared their goal they feared lest the mist might, at the last, deprive them of the culminating moment for which they had braved such dangers. But suddenly, as if touched by their perseverance, says M. Desor, the veil of fog lifted, and the summit of the Jungfrau, in its final solitude, rose before them. There was still a certain distance to be passed before they actually reached the base of the extreme peak. Here they paused, not without a certain hesitation, for though the summit lay but a few feet [329] above them, they were separated from it by a sharp and seemingly inaccessible ridge. Even Agassiz, who was not easily discouraged, said, as he looked up at this highest point of the fortress they had scaled: ‘We can never reach it.’ For all answer, Jacob Leuthold, their intrepid guide, flinging down everything which could embarrass his movements, stretched his alpenstock over the ridge as a grappling pole, and, trampling the snow as he went, so as to flatten his giddy path for those who were to follow, was in a moment on the top. To so steep an apex does this famous peak narrow, that but one person can stand on the summit at a time, nor was even this possible till the snow was beaten down. Returning on his steps, Leuthold, whose quiet, unflinching audacity of success was contagious, assisted each one to stand for a few moments where he had stood. The fog, the effect of which they had so much feared, now lent something to the beauty of the view from this sublime foothold. Masses of vapor rolled up from the Roththal on the southwest, but, instead of advancing to envelop them, paused at a little distance arrested by some current from the plain. The temperature being below freezing point, the drops of moisture in [330] this wall of vapor were congealed into ice-crystals, which glittered like gold in the sunlight and gave back all the colors of the rainbow.
When all the party were once more assembled at the base of the peak, Jacob, whose resources never failed, served to each one a little wine, and they rested on the snow before beginning their perilous descent. Of living things they saw only a hawk, poised in the air above their heads; of plants, a few lichens, where the surface of the rock was exposed. It was four o'clock in the afternoon before they started on their downward path, turning their faces to the icy slope, and feeling for the steps behind them, some seven hundred in all, which had been cut in ascending. In about an hour they reached the Col of the Roththal, where the greatest difficulties of the ascent had begun and the greatest dangers of the descent were over. So elated were they by the success of the day, and so regardless of lesser perils after those they had passed through, that they were now inclined to hurry forward incautiously. Jacob, prudent when others were rash, as he was bold when others were intimidated, constantly called them to order with his: ‘Hubschle! [331] nur immer hubschle!’ （‘Gently! always gently!’）
At six o'clock they were once more at Le Repos, having retraced their steps in two hours over a distance which had cost them six in going. Evening was now falling, but daylight was replaced by moonlight, and when they reached the glacier its whole surface shone with a soft silvery lustre, broken here and there by the gigantic shadow of some neighboring mountain thrown black across it. At about nine o'clock, just as they had passed that part of the glacier which was, on account of the frequent crevasses, the most dangerous, they were cheered by the sound of a distant jodel. It was the call of a peasant who had been charged to meet them with provisions, at a certain distance above Lake Meril, in case they should be overcome by hunger and fatigue. The most acceptable thing he brought was his great wooden bucket, filled with fresh milk. The picture of the party, as they stood around him in the moonlight, dipping eagerly into his bucket, and drinking in turn until they had exhausted the supply, is so vivid, that one shares their good spirits and their enjoyment. Thus refreshed, they started on the last stage of [332] their journey, three leagues of which yet lay before them, and at half-past 11 arrived at the chalets of Meril, which they had left at dawn.
On the morrow the party broke up, and Agassiz and Desor, accompanied by their friend, M. Escher de la Linth, returned to the Grimsel, and after a day's rest there repaired once more to the Hatel des Neuchatelois. They remained on the glacier until the 5th of September, spending these few last days in completing their measurements, and in planting the lines of stakes across the glacier, to serve as a means of determining its rate of movement during the year, and the comparative rapidity of that movement at certain fixed points. Thus concluded one of the most eventful seasons Agassiz and his companions had yet passed upon the Alps.10
