The original entrance to the fissure,
at the top of the _cheminee_, was, as has been said, at the base of
lofty rocks, and we had descended very considerably from the entrance;
so that, even without the strange light thrown upon the matter by the
small hole overhead, through which we had seen the day struggling to
force its way into the cavern, we should have been sure that we were now
at an immense distance below the surface. One corner of the cave was
occupied by a broad and solid-looking cascade, while another corner
showed the opening of a very narrow fissure, curved like one of the
shell-shaped crevasses of a glacier. Into this fissure the ice-floor
streamed; and Rosset held my coat-tails while I made a few steps down
the stream, when the fall became too rapid for further voluntary
progress. I let down a stone for 18 feet, when it stuck fast, and would
move neither one way nor the other. The upper wall of this fissure was
clothed with moss-like ice, and ice of the prismatic structure,--with
here and there large scythe-blades, as it were, attached by the sharp
edge to the rock, and lying vertically with the heel outwards.
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