The maire could not understand how it was that, after a winter
especially severe, as that of 1863-4 had been, there should be even less
ice than in the preceding summer, and we could see the marks of last
year's cutting, down to the edge of the _moulin_. He said that they had
never before cut down in that direction; but in the summer of 1863 they
had been so much struck by the clearness of the ice which formed the
floor, that they had cut it freely, and removed a large quantity. This,
I believe, was the cause of the absence of any great amount of fresh
ice. The slope of the whole ice-floor is considerable, and the workmen
increased the slope by cutting away the ice in the neighbourhood of the
edge of the _moulin_: they had also, as we could see quite plainly,
excavated the clearer parts of the ice between the entrance to the cave
and the _moulin_, so that a sort of trough ran down from near the foot
of the snow to the pit at the lower end of the glaciere. When we were
there, the water rushed down this trough, and was lost in the pit; and
very probably the same may have been the case in the earlier parts of
the year, when, according to the view I have already expressed, the ice
would under ordinary circumstances have been formed.
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