Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence

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and Johann Wahren were chosen. Both of these had accompanied Hugi in his ascension of the Finsteraarhorn in 1828, and both were therefore thoroughly familiar with all the dangers of Alpine climbing. The lower Aar glacier was to be the scene of their continuous work, and the centre from which their ascents of the neighboring summits would be made. Here, on the great median moraine, stood a huge boulder of micaceous schist. Its upper surface projected so as to form a roof, and by closing it in on one side with a stone wall, leveling the floor by a judicious arrangement of flat slabs, and rigging a blanket in front to serve as a curtain across the entrance, the whole was presently transformed into a rude hut, where six persons could fi

etc., in Agassiz's "Systeme Glaciaire". These results are also recorded in a volume entitled "Sejours dans les Glaciers", by Edouard Desor, a collection of very bright and entertaining articles upon the excursions and sojourns made in the Alps, during successive summers, by Agassiz and his scientific staff.) To M. Vogt fell the microsc

y his friend Guyot.* (* See Biographical Sketch, published by Professor A. Guyot, under the auspices of the United States National Academy.) "The position of eighteen of the most prominent rocks on the glacier was determined by careful triangulation by a skillful engineer, and measured year after year to establish the rate of motion of every part. The differences in the rate of motion in the upper and lower part of

lighted the fire and prepared breakfast, bade them not despair,-the sun might make all right. In a few moments, one by one, the summits of the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, the Oberaarhorn, the Altmaner, the Scheuchzerhorn, lighted by the first rays of the sun, came out like islands above the ocean of mist, which softly broke away and vanished with the advancing light. In about three hours they reached the base of the Strahleck. Their two guides, Leuthold and Wahren, had engaged three additional men for this excursion, so that they now had five guides, none of whom were superfluous, since they carried with them various barometric i

erhorner. The first pause of silent wonder and delight, while they released themselves from their cords and arranged their instruments, seems to have been succeeded by an outburst of spirits; for in the journal of the youngest of the party, Francois de Pourtales, then a lad of seventeen, we read: "The guides began to wrestle and we to dance, when suddenly we saw a female chamois, followed by

se of great depth, and some twenty feet wide; on a bridge of ice, one or two feet in width, and broken toward the end, where we were obliged to spring across. Once on the glacier the rest was nothing. The race was to the fastest, and we were soon on the path of the tourists." Reaching the village of Grindelwald at three o'clock in the afternoon, they found it difficult to persuade the people at the inn that they had left the glacier of the Aar that morning. From Grindelwald they returned by the Scheideck to the Grimsel, visiting on their way the upper glacier of Grindelwald, the glacier of Schwartzwald, and that of Rosenlaui, in order to see how far these had advanced since the

he Swiss valleys, I said to Buckland: 'Here we shall find our first traces of glaciers;' and, as the stage entered the valley, we actually drove over an ancient terminal moraine, which spanned the opening of the valley." In short, Agassiz found, as he had anticipated, that in the mountains of Scotland, Wales, and the north of England, the valleys were in many instances traversed by terminal moraines and bordered by lateral ones, as in Switzerland. Nor were any of the accompanying phenomena wanting. The characteristic traces left by the ice, as well known to him now as the track of the game to the hunter; the peculiar lines, furrows, and grooves; the polished surfaces, the roches moutonnees; the rocks, whether hard or soft, cut to one level, as by a rigid instrument; the unstratified drift and the distribution of loose material in relation to the ancient glacier beds,-all agreed with what he already knew of glacial action. He visited the famous "roads of Glen Roy" in the Grampian Hills, where so many geologists had broken a lance in defense of their theories of subsidence and upheaval, of ancient ocean-levels and sea-beaches, formed at a time when they believed Glen Roy and the adjoining valleys to have been so many fiords and estuaries. To Agassiz, these parallel terraces explained themselves as the shores of a glacial lake, held back in its bed for a

STLE, Octob

lar moraines and detritus of moraines, that cover half of the adjoining counties are explicable on your theory, and he has consented to my proposal that he should immediately lay them all down on a map of the county and describe them in a paper to be read the day a

hem, pray do so.* (* Agassiz was then staying at Florence Court, the seat of the Earl of Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh, Ireland. While there he had an opportunity of studying most interesting glacial phenomena. )

ows that Agassiz felt his views to be slowl

Z TO SIR PHI

November

hey did not produce much effect. I was, however, delighted to have some appearance of serious opposition, because it gave me a chance to insist upon the exactness of my observations,

of fossil fishes to Lord Francis Egerton.) and that I now feel within myself a courage which doubles my strength. I have just wr

ter from Humboldt, which shows that he too was beginning

TO LOUI

August 1

or for whom I have a warmer love and admiration, and yet I allow half the year to pass without giving you a sign of life, without any expression of

ence. I count with reason upon their indulgence. The tone of your excellent letters shows that I am right. You spoil me. Your letters continue to be always warm and affectionate. I receive few like them. Since two thirds of the letters addressed to me (partly copies of letters written to the king or the ministers) remain unanswered, I am blamed, charged with being a parvenu courtier, an apostate from science. This bitterness of individual claims does not diminish

rding it. It is because I am so attached to you that I rejoice in the calmer atmosphere you have thus established about you. The approaching completion of the fossil fishes delivers me also from the fear

companying each plate add singularly to the charm and the enjoyment of this kind of study. Accept my warm thanks, my dear friend. I not only delivered your letter and the copy with it to the king, but I added a short note on the merit of such an undertaking. The counselor of the Royal Cabinet writes me officially that the king has o

s. . .My desire is always to listen and to learn. Taught from my youth to believe that the organization of past times was somewhat tropical in character, and startled therefore at these glacial interruptions, I cried "Heresy!" at first. But should we not always

Paris and correcting proofs here,-at Poretz or at Toplitz. I am just now beginning to print the first number of my physics of the world, under the title of "Cosmos:" in German, "Ideen zur erner physischen Weltbeschreibung." It is in no sense a reproduction of the lectures I gave here. The subject is the same, but the presentation does not at all recall the form of a popular course. As a book, it has a somewhat graver and more elevated style. A "spoken book" is always a poor book, just as lectures re

HUMB

ll flowed from beneath the glaciers during the frosts of winter. This fact would have a direct bearing upon the theory which referred the melting and movement of the glaciers chiefly to their lower surface, explaining them by the central heat of the earth as their main cause. Satisfied as he was of the fallacy of this notion, Agassiz still wished to have the evidence of the glacier itself.

ow, while the whole surface of the glacier as well as the surrounding peaks, from base to summit, wore the same spotless mantle. The Finsteraarhorn alone stood out in bold relief, black against a white world, its abrupt slopes affording no foothold for the snow. The scene was far more monotonous than in summer. Crevasses, with their blue depths of ice, were closed; the many-voiced streams were still; the moraines and boulders were only here and there visible through the universal shroud. The sky was without a clou

have the cooperation of the ablest men in that department, and to share with them such facilities for observation and such results as he had thus far accumulated. In addition to his usual collaborators, M. Desor and M. Vogt, he had, therefore, invited as his guest, during part of the season, the distinguished physicist, Professor James D. Forbes, of Edinburgh, who brought with him his friend, Mr. Heath, of Cambridge.* (* As the impressions of Mr. Forbes were only made known in connection with his own later and independent researches it is unnecessary to refer to them here.) M. Escher de la Linth took also an active part in the work of the later summer. To his working corps Agassiz had added the foreman of M. Kahli, an engineer at Bienne, to whom he had confided his pla

re incorporated in the "Systeme Glaciaire," published in 1846, with twenty-four folio plates and two maps. They were of the highest interest with reference to the internal structure and temperature of the ice and the penetrability of its mass, pervious throughout, as it proved, to air and water. On one occasion the boring-rod, having bee

had called especial attention to it, as in his belief connected with the internal conditions of the glacier. It was agreed, as Agassiz bade farewell to his friends on this curious voyage of discovery, that he should be allowed to descend until he called out that they were to lift him. He was lowered successfully and without accident to a depth of eighty feet. There he encountered an unforeseen difficulty in a wall of ice which divided the well into two compartments. He tried first the larger one, but finding it split again into several narrow tunnels, he caused himself to be raised sufficiently to enter the smaller, and again proceeded on his downward course without meeting any obstacle. Wholly engrossed in watching the blue bands, still visible in the glittering walls of ice, he was only aroused to the presence of approaching danger by the sudden p

he morning. Crossing the Col of the Oberaar they descended to the snowy plateau which feeds the Viescher glacier. In this grand amphitheatre, walled in by the peaks of the Viescherhorner, they rested for their midday meal. In crossing these fields of snow, while walking with perfect security upon what seemed a solid mass, they observed certain window-like openings in the snow. Stooping to examine one of them, they looked into an immense op

n last here with Hugi in 1832, nine years before, and upon which he depended, had been taken away by a peasant of Viesch. Two messengers were sent in the course of the night to the village to demand its restoration. The first returned unsuccessful; the second was the bearer of such threats of summary punishment from the whole party that he carried his point, and appeared a

arly saw the course he meant to follow. It began by an open gulf of unknown depth, though not too wide to be spanned by their ladder twenty-three feet in length. On the other side of this crevasse, and immediately above it, rose an abrupt wall of icy snow. Up this wall Leuthold and another guide led the way, cutting steps as they went. When half way up they lowered the rope, holding one end, while their companions fastened the other to the ladder, so that it served them as a kind of hand-rail, by which to follow. At the top they found themselves on a terrace, beyond which a far more moderate slope led to the Col of Roththal, overlooking the Aletsch valley on one side, the Roththal on the other. From this point the ascent was more and more steep and very slow, as every step had to be cut. Their difficulties were increased, also, by a mist which gathered around them, and by the intense cold. Leuthold kept the party near the border of the ridge, because there the ice yielded more readily to the stroke of the axe; but it put their steadiness of nerve to the greatest test, by keeping the precipice constantly in view, except when hidden by the fog. Indeed, they could drive their alpenstocks through the overhanging rim of frozen snow, and look sheer down through the hole thus made to the amphitheatre below. One of the guides left them, unable longer to endure the sight of these precipices so close at hand. As they neared their goal they feared lest the mist might, at the last, deprive them of the culminating moment for which they had braved such dangers. But suddenly, as if touched by their perseverance, says M. Desor, the veil of

o'clock in the afternoon before they started on their downward path, turning their faces to the icy slope, and feeling for the steps behind them, some seven hundred in all, which had been cut in ascending. In about an hour they reached the Col of the Roththal, where the greatest difficulties of the ascent had begun and the greatest dangers of the descent were ov

y had passed that part of the glacier which was, on account of the frequent crevasses, the most dangerous, they were cheered by the sound of a distant yodel. It was the call of a peasant who had been charged to meet them with provisions, at a certain distance above Lake Meril, in case they should be overcome by hunger and fatigue. The most acceptable thing he brought was his great wooden bucket, filled with fresh milk.

s, and in planting the lines of stakes across the glacier, to serve as a means of determining its rate of movement during the year, and the comparative rapidity of that movement at certain fixed points. Thus concluded one of the most eventful seasons Agassiz and his companions had yet passed upon the Alps.* (* Though quoting his