May I be there to see![72]
The left side of the glaciere, near the entrance, was occupied by a
columnar cascade, behind which I forced a passage by chopping away some
lovely ornaments of ice. Here also the solid ground-ice falls away a
little under the surface, leaving a cavern 8 or 9 feet deep, on the rock
side of which every possible glacial fantasy was to be found. The
stalactites here presented the peculiar prismatic structure so often
noticed; but on the more exposed side of the column they were tipped
with limpid ice, free from all apparent external or internal lines. This
reminded me of what we had observed in the Glaciere of La Genolliere,
namely, that the surface-lines tended to disappear under thaw; so I cut
a piece of prismatic ice and put it in my mouth. In a short time it
became perfectly limpid, and on breaking it up I could discover no signs
of prism. On some parts of the floor of the glaciere, the ice was
apparently unprismatic, generally in connection with running water or
other marks of thaw; but, to my surprise, I found that it split into
prisms very readily.
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