The three large masses of ice which rendered this glacière in some
respects more remarkable than any of those I have seen, lay in a line
from east to west, across the middle of the cave, on that part of the
floor where the ice was thickest. The central mass was extremely
solid, but somewhat unmeaning in shape, being a rough irregular
pyramid; its size alone, however, was sufficient to make it very
striking, the girth being 66-1/2 feet at some distance from the
ice-floor with which it blended. The mass which lay to the east of
this was very lovely, owing to the good taste of some one who had
found that much ice was wont to accumulate on that spot, and had
accordingly fixed the trunk of a small fir-tree, with the upper
branches complete, to receive the water from the corresponding fissure
in the roof. The consequence was, that, while the actual tree had
vanished from sight under its icy covering, excepting on one side
where a slight investigation betrayed its presence, the mass of ice
showed every possible fantasy of form which a mould so graceful could
suggest. At the base, it was solid, with a circumference of 37 feet.
The huge column, which had collected round the trunk of the fir-tree,
branched out at the top into all varieties of eccentricity and beauty,
each twig of the different boughs becoming, to all appearance, a solid
bar of frosted ice, with graceful curve, affording a point of
suspension for complicated groups of icicles, which streamed down side
by side with emulous loveliness. In some of the recesses of the
column, the ice assumed a pale blue colour; but as a rule it was white
and very hard, not so regularly prismatic as the ice described in
former glacières, but palpably crystalline, showing a structure not
unlike granite, with a bold grain, and with a large predominance of
the glittering element. But the westernmost mass was the grandest and
most beautiful of all. It consisted of two lofty heads, like weeping