the trees in which it lies. The circumference of this wall is 435 feet,
but there are so many trees at the upper end of the enclosure that this
gives an exaggerated idea of the size of the pit. The men fed while the
preliminary measurements were being made; and when this was
accomplished, they pressed their bottle of wine upon me so hospitably
that I was obliged to antedate the result which its appearance promised,
and plead _mal d'estomac_. Of all things, it is most unwise to give a
reason for a negative, and so it proved in this instance; for they
promptly felicitated themselves and me on the good luck by which it
happened that they had brought a wine famous on all the côte as a remedy
for that somewhat vague complaint--a homoeopathic remedy in allopathic
doses.

The glacière is entered by a natural pit in the gentle slope of grass,
not much unlike the pit of La Genollière, but wider, and covered at
the bottom with snow.[19] The first ladder leads down to a ledge of
rock on which bushes and trees grow, and this ledge it is possible to
reach without a ladder; the next ladder leads on to the deep snow, and
descent by any ordinary manner of climbing is in this case quite
impossible.[20] The snow slopes down towards a lofty arch in the rock
which forms the north-west side of the pit, and this arch is the
entrance to the glacière; it is 28-3/4 feet wide, and as soon as we
passed under it we found that the snow became ice, and it was
necessary to cut steps; for the surface of underground ice is so
slippery, unlike the surface of ordinary glaciers, that the slightest
defect from the horizontal makes the use of the axe advisable. The
stream of ice falls gradually, spreading out laterally like a fan, so
as to accommodate itself to the shape of the cave, which it fills up
to the side walls; it increases in breadth from 28-3/4 feet at the top
to 72 feet at the bottom of the slope, and the distance from the top