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 glacieres, 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
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.
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