willows in Carrara marble, with three or four others less lofty,
resembling a family group of lions' heads in a subdued attitude of
grief, richly decked with icy manes. Similar heads seemed to grow out
here and there from the solid sides of the huge mass. The girth was
76-1/2 feet, measured about 2 feet from the floor. When this column was
looked at from the side removed from the entrance to the cave, so
that it stood in the centre of the light which poured down the long
slope from the outer world, the transparency of the ice brought it to
pass that the whole seemed set in a narrow frame of impalpable liquid
blue, the effect of light penetrating through the mass at its extreme
edges. The only means of determining the height of this column was by
tying a stone to the end of a string, and lodging it on the highest
head; but this was not an easy process, as I was naturally anxious not
to injure the delicate beauty which made that head one of the
loveliest things conceivable; and each careful essay with the stone
seemed to involve as much responsibility as taking a shot at a hostile
wicket, in a crisis of the game, instead of returning the ball in the
conventional manner. When at last it was safely lodged, the height
proved to be 27 feet. I had hoped to find it much more than this, from
the grandeur of the effect of the whole mass, and I took the trouble
to measure the knotted string again with a tape, to make sure that
there was no mistake. The column formed upon the fir-tree was 3 or 4
feet lower.

I have since found many notices of this glacière in the Memoirs of the
French Academy and elsewhere, extracts from which will be found in a
later chapter. These accounts are spread over a period of 200 years,
extending from 1590 to 1790, and almost all make mention of the columns
or groups of columns I have described; but, without exception, the
heights given or suggested in the various accounts are much less than