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Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland by George Forrest Browne
page 72 of 321 (22%)
No certain information could be obtained in the hotel respecting the
glacière; so an owner of carriages was summoned, and consulted as to the
best means of getting there. He naturally recommended that one of his
own carriages should be taken as far as the Abbey of Grâce-Dieu, and
that we should start at five o'clock the next morning, with a driver who
knew the way to the glacière from the point at which the carriage must
be left.[34] Five o'clock seemed very early for a drive of fifteen
miles; but the man asserted that instead of five leagues it was a good
seven or eight, and so it turned out to be. This glacière may be called
a historical glacière, being the only one which has attracted general
attention; and the mistake about its distance from Besançon arose very
many years ago, and has been perpetuated by a long series of copyists.
The distance may not be more than five leagues when measured on the map
with a ruler; but until the tunnels and via-ducts necessary for a crow
line are constructed, the world must be content to call it seven and a
half at least. The man bargained for two days' pay for the carriage, on
the plea that the horse would be so tired the next day that he would not
be able to do any work, and as that day was Sunday, the great day for
excursions, it would be a dead loss. It so happened that the charge for
two days, fifteen francs, was exactly what I paid elsewhere for one day,
so there was no difficulty about the price.

We started, accordingly, at five o'clock. The day was delightfully
fine, and in spite of the driver's peculiarity of speech, caused by a
short tongue, and aggravated by a villanous little black pipe clutched
between his remaining teeth, we got through a large amount of question
and answer respecting the country through which we passed. Of course,
the reins were carried through rings low down on the kicking-strap,
ingeniously placed so that each whisk of the horse's tail caught one or
other rein; and then the process of extraction was a somewhat dangerous
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