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The ground here
slopes down towards the north; and on the slope, among fir-trees, an
irregular circular basin is seen, some seven or eight yards across,[13]
and perhaps two yards deep, at the bottom of which are two holes. One of
these holes is open, and as the guide and I--for my sisters remained at
Arzier--stood on the neck of ground between the holes, we could see the
snow lying at the bottom of the cave; the other is covered with trunks
of trees, laid over the mouth to prevent the rays of the sun from
striking down on to the ice. This protection has become necessary in
consequence of an incautious felling of wood in the immediate
neighbourhood of the mouth, which has exposed the ice to the assaults of
the weather. The commune has let the glaciere for a term of nine years,
receiving six or seven hundred francs in all; and the _fermier_ extracts
the ice, and sells it in Geneva and Lausanne. In hot summers, the
supplies of the artificial ice-houses fail; and then the hotel-keepers
have recourse to the stores laid up for them by nature in the Glacieres
of S.


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