the ice-floor ceased for a while, and left the stones and rock bare. The
former gave 33°, the latter, till I was on the point of leaving, 31
1/2°, when it fell suddenly to 31°. It was impossible, however, to stay
any longer for the sake of watching the thermometer fall lower and lower
below the freezing point; indeed, the results of sundry incautious
fathomings of the various pools of water, and incessant contact of hands
and feet with the ice, had already become so unpleasant, that I was
obliged to desert my trusty hundred feet of string, and leave it lying
on the ice, from want of finger-power to roll it up. The thermometers
were both Casella's, but that which registered 31° was the more lively
of the two, the other being mercurial, with a much thicker stem: the
difference in sensitiveness was so great, that when they were equally
exposed to the sun in driving home, the one ran up to 93° before the
other had reached 85°.

In leaving the glacière, I found a little pathway turning off along the
face of the rock on the left hand, a short way up the slope of entrance,
and looking as if it might lead to the opening in the dark wall on the
western side of the cave. After a time, however, it came to a corner
which it seemed an unnecessary risk to attempt to pass alone; and my
prudence was rewarded by the discovery that, after all, the supposed
cave could not be thus reached. It is said that this other cave was the
place to which the inhabitants fled for refuge when their district was
invaded, probably by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar with his 10,000 Swedes,
and that a ladder 40 feet long is necessary for getting at it.

The driver had long ago absconded when I returned to the upper regions;
but the wife of the farmer of the grotto was there, and communicated
all that she knew of the statistics of the ice annually removed. She
said that in 1863 two chars were loaded every day for two months, each