In the summer of 1861, I found myself, with some members of my family,
in a small rustic _pension_ in the village of Arzier, one of the highest
villages of the pleasant slope by which the Jura passes down to the Lake
of Geneva. The son of the house was an intelligent man, with a good
knowledge of the natural curiosities which abound in that remarkable
range of hills, and under his guidance we saw many strange things. More
than once, he spoke of the existence of a _glacière_ at no great
distance, and talked of taking us to see it; but we were sceptical on
the subject, imagining that _glacière_ was his patois for _glacier_, and
knowing that anything of the glacier kind was out of the question. At
last, however, on a hot day in August, we set off with him, armed, at
his request, with candles; and, after two or three hours of pine
forests, and grass glades, and imaginary paths up rocky ranges of hill
towards the summits of the Jura, we came to a deep natural pit, down the
side of which we scrambled. At the bottom, after penetrating a few yards
into a chasm in the rock, we discovered a small low cave, perfectly
dark, with a flooring of ice, and a pillar of the same material in the
form of a headless woman, one of whose shoulders we eventually carried
off, to regale our parched friends at Arzier. We lighted up the cave
with candles, and sat crouched on the ice drinking our wine, finding
water, which served the double purpose of icing and diluting the wine,
in small basins in the floor of ice, formed apparently by drops falling
from the roof of the cave.

A few days after, our guide and companion took us to an ice-cavern on a
larger scale, which, we were told, supplies Geneva with ice when the
ordinary stores of that town fail; and the next year my sisters went to
yet another, where, however, they did not reach the ice, as the ladder