the farmer told me afterwards that there had been two glorious
columns at this portal, which the recent rains had swept away.
Excepting a short space at the foot of the slope, and another towards
the farther end of the cave, the floor was covered with ice, in some
parts from 3 to 4 feet thick: of this a considerable area had been
removed to a depth of 2 1/2 or 3 feet, leaving a pond of water a foot
deep, with bottom and banks of ice. The rock which composes the true
floor rises at the farthest end of the cave, and the roof is so
arranged that a sort of private chapel is there formed; and from a
fissure in the dome a monster column of ice had been constructed on
the floor, which, at the time of my visit, had lost its upper parts,
and stood as a hollow truncated cone with sides a foot thick, and with
seas of ice streaming from it, and covering the rising pavement of the
chapel. Without an axe, and without help, I was unable to measure the
girth of this column, which had not been without companions on a
smaller scale in the immediate neighbourhood. At the west end of the
cave, the wall was thickly covered for a large space with small
limestone stalactites, producing the effect of many tiers of fringe on
a shawl; while from a dark fissure in the roof a large piece of fluted
drapery of the same material hung, calling to mind some of the vastly
grander details of the grottoes of Hans-sur-Lesse in Belgium: down
this wall there was also a long row of icicles, on the edges of a
narrow fissure. The north-west corner was very dark, and an opening in
the wall of rock high above the ground suggested a tantalising cave up
there: the ground in this corner was occupied by the shattered remains
of numerous columns of ice, which had originally covered a circular
area between 60 and 70 feet in circumference.

[Illustration: VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIÈRE OF GRÂCE-DIEU, NEAR
BESANÇON.]