The character of the ground on the plateau changed suddenly, and we
passed at one step, apparently, from a meadow of flowers to a wilderness
of fissured rock, lying white and skeleton-like in the afternoon sun. We
only skirted this rock in the first instance, and made for a clump of
trees some little way off, in which we found a deep pit, with a path of
sufficient steepness leading to the bottom. Here we came to a collection
of snow, much sheltered by overhanging rocks and trees; and this, our
guide told us, was the _neigiere_, a word evidently formed on the same
principle as _glaciere_. The snow was half-covered with leaves, and was
unpleasantly wet to our feet, so that we did not spend much time on it,
or rather in it. A huge fragment of rock had at some time or other
fallen from overhead, and now occupied a large part of the sloping
bottom of the pit: by squeezing myself through a narrow crevice between
this and the live rock, which looked as if it ought to lead to
something, I found a veritable ice-cave, unhappily free from ornament,
and of very small size, like a round soldier's tent in shape, with walls
of rock and floor of ice.
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