passed through the village of Pralong
du Reposoir, the peasants told them with one accord that they would find
nothing but warmth and water in the cave; but when M. Thury asked had
any of them seen it themselves, they were equally unanimous in saying
no, explaining that it was not worth anyone's while to go in the winter,
as there was no ice to be seen then,--a circular line of argument which
did not commend itself to the strangers.

At the very entrance of the grotto, they found beautiful stalactites of
clear ice; and here they paused, till such time as they should be cool
enough to enter, for the thermometer stood at 70 deg. in the sun, and their
climb had made them hot. On penetrating to the farther recesses of the
cave, where the true glaciere lies, they found an abundance of
stalactites, stalagmites, and columns of ice, with flooring and slopes
of the same material: not a drop of water anywhere. The stalagmites were
very numerous, but none of them more than three feet high; some of the
stalactites, fifteen or so in number, were six or seven feet long, and
there were many others of a smaller size. M. Thury was particularly
struck by the milky appearance of much of the ice, one column in
particular resembling porcelain more than any other substance. This is a
not unusual character of the most beautiful part of the decorations of
the more sheltered ice-caves, as for instance the lowest cave in the
Upper Glaciere of the Pre de S. Livres; the white appearance is not due
to the presence of air, for the ice is transparent and homogeneous, and
the naked eye is unable to detect bubbles or internal fissures.

The temperatures at 1.25 P.M. and 2.12 P.M. respectively were as
follows:--In the sun, between 3 and 4 feet above the snow, 72 deg..1 and
70 deg..5; in the shade, outside the cave, 36 deg..7 and 35 deg..8; at the
Observatory of Geneva, in the shade, 27 deg..3 and 28 deg..2, having risen from
24 deg..5 since noon. In the cave, 1 foot above the surface of the
ice-floor, the thermometer stood at 24 deg..8; and in a hole in the ice,
some few inches below the surface, 24 deg..1. In the large fissure, which has
been already mentioned as the source of the summer currents of air, the
temperature at various points was from 29 deg..3 to 27 deg..5. The circumstances
of these currents of air were now of course changed. Instead of a steady
current passing from the fissure into the cave, and so out by the main
entrance into the open