If this be so, the
caverns below must have received immense additions to their stores of
ice or water. We observed, by the way, that the slope of ice to which
the candle descended in the deeper pit, and the shelf on which it
rested, were quite dry, or at any rate free from all apparent signs of
the abundant water we should have seen, had that been the outlet for the
streams which poured into the _moulin_. The maire said that the columns
and cascades of ice in the cave had been much more beautiful in the
previous summer.
The whole cavern would thus appear to be something of the shape of an
egg, with the longer axis vertical, and the entrance about half-way up
the side. The lower end of this egg-shaped cavity in the rock is filled
with ice, which in some parts shrinks from the rock below the surface,
though, as far as outward appearance goes, it fills the cavern to its
farthest corners. The depth of this ice at one side is 60 feet, and how
much more it may be in the middle it is impossible to say. As we have
seen, there is a second ice-cave opening out of the principal one, at a
depth of 190 feet below the surface; and with respect to this second
cave imagination may run riot.
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