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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 Excerpt: ...ice beyond the terminal moraines. Our guides cut steps in the ice, and climbing up, help us along by the ropes they have tied round their waists. It is hard work, and our hands are sore with ... More

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 Excerpt: ...ice beyond the terminal moraines. Our guides cut steps in the ice, and climbing up, help us along by the ropes they have tied round their waists. It is hard work, and our hands are sore with the pulling; they are cold where we have seized the ice to hold on, but at last we reach the top and stand on the glacier. The top of the glacier is rough with little peaks here and there. It has many wide cracks and crevasses, some of which are hundreds of feet deep. We lean over and hear the water rolling along away down there under the great frozen mass. There are streams of ice water flowing into the cracks and crossing the glacier this way and that. Here is a pool, and there is a deep crevasse half filled with melted snow. We get down on our knees, and take a drink from the pool, and then start over the glacier. We drive the steel points of our alpenstocks into the snowy white surface to steady ourselves, although we are tied with ropes to one another and to the guide. In single file we thus make our way up the frozen river, now jumping a crevasse, now winding about to avoid the larger ice mounds, and now skirting the banks or moraines, the masses of bowlders and clay which the glacier is carrying along as it moves on its way. And is the glacier moving? Let us stop and watch it. We hear a great crack now and then, and sometimes a stone rolls down from the mountains; but we see no signs of motion in the icy river under our feet. And still it is moving now as it has been moving for ages. This glacier is one of the oldest travelers of history. It began its journey centuries ago, and it will probably go on for ages to come. It is traveling at the rate of two feet per day, or about an inch every hour. Be careful how you jump that crevasse! If you should slip you might b...

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