Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1860-11-29
Eelecteh Miscellany>
The March of the Glaciers.

There are few spectacles in nature SO cal
culated to inspire awe and provoke curiosity
as those "motionless torrents, silent catar
acts" which form the glaciers of the Alps.
At first sight, one could almost sympathise
with the stold English tourist, who, after
gazing on one of them for some time in 81
lence, declared that it was "obtrusive and
unmeaning" There is something unspeak
ably strange and perplexing in the presence
of vast mass of ice, to all appearance fixed,
immutable, under burning sun, and in
close contact with verdure and fertility
The dazzling pallor, the desolation, the 81
lence of the ''dead sea- Of ice, contrast for
chilly with the green and golden vegetation
Of the valley, with the ripe cornfelds, the
spreading foliage, and the
ssFlowers of lovelest blue
That skirt the eternal frost"
It is death in the midst of life, the skeleton
at the banquet of nature.
Standing by the brink or on the surface
of the hard, rigid mass, the assertion that
it moves is startling, and almost Incredible;
indeed, a certain professor of Tubingen went
home, after visit to Switzerland. and wrote
book fatty denying the possibility of ia
motion. Observation and reflection,
however, quickly remove our doubts. We
have only to keep our eye on one of the
blocks of stone upon the ice, in line with
two fixed points--a tree or ledge of rock
at opposite sides of the glacier, to be assur-
ed that the stone changes it's position, and
is born downwards with the ice. The gla-
cier, too, tells it's story in unmistakable
language: 1t inscribes the record Of its
Journey on the hardest rocks, land carries on
its breast, or at it's base. fragments Of dis
tant mountains, which, like the scallop in
the palmer's hat tell Of it's wanderings. In
fact, the very existence Of the glacier de-
pends on it's motion Unless the ice below
the snow-line, which during every summer,
is melted by the sun, were replaced, the
lower part of the glacier would in few
years disappear. While, however, the ice
at the base is gradually being reduced to
water, fresh snow is falling on the summit
of the mountain, and displacing previous
deposits. which. descending, are converted
into ice, and added to the glacier. Accord
ing to Roaola a-tAe- zaeeaaaalatien of the
mountain-snows adds each year So inches of
ice to a glacier This would make Mount
Blanc 400 feet higher in century, 1000
feet higher in thousand years. Dissolu-
ton and compensation are thus constantly
going forward, and the downward motioa.ei
the mass prevents any diminution from be-
ing observed. Rigid and infexible, there
fore, as the glacier seems, it is in reality a
restless boly, subject to constant motion and
perpetual change, ever fastening from its
birth place in the mountain bosom above to
its grave in the pasture ground below. 1t
is something more than mere metaphor to
call glacies m,er de glace. The resem-
blance extends beyond the mere wave-like
appearance of the surface. The deeps and
shadows, widenings and narrowings, rapids
and sluggish parts, the quicker flow of the
centre than of the sides, the depression which
occurs when the current sweeps round a
buttress, the ejdnction of branches and tribu-
taries-aH are to be found in the glacier as
in therlyer.