While he was making his way
up, I amused myself by chopping and carving at the ice at various
points to examine its structure, until at length a _Jodel_ from above
announced that Christian had reached his post; and a vast amount of
hammering ensued, of which I could not understand the meaning. Presently
he called out that 'it' was coming, and assuredly it did come. There was
a loud crash on the upper part of the fall, and a shower of fragments of
ice came whizzing past, and almost dislodged me; while the sound of
pieces of ice bounding and gliding down the slope seemed as if it never
would cease. It turned out to mean that my friend had not been able to
find a stone; so he had smashed a block of ice from the column which
presided over the fall, and having attached the string to this, had
hurled the whole apparatus in my direction, fortunately not doing as
much damage as he might have done. My end of the string was not to be
seen, so he repeated the experiment, with a piece of wood in place of
the block of ice, and this time it succeeded. We found that from top to
bottom of the fall was 45 yards.
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