Arizona republican., 1912-10-05
NATIONAL LEAGUE.
GLACIERS oUARRIED FROM ICE
Becoming One of the Important ln-
 dustries in Switzerland

Quarrying glaciers is becoming an 1 important industry in Switzerland, and whenever a glacier in the Alpine districts can be connected by chutes with some place having good trans portation facilities companies have l been or are being formed to carry on the business, concessions having been granted by many Swiss com panies. The French city of Lyon is the most important consumer of gla- cier ice, which owing to it's purity and transparency commands a higher price than that cut from lakes or rivers.
 The ice is blasted out of the gla-
 ciers by means of black powder,
 which it has been found does not dis
 color the ice as giant powder does.
 The blocks have to be stored for
 some time in ice houses such as are
 used in this country, made of two
 walls of lumber, with saWdust filling
 the space between them, in order
 that a coating of frosted or non
 transparent ice which covers the
 blocks after they have been removed
 from the glacier may be removed.
 Much ingenuity is shown in build
 ing the chutes which carry the blocks
 of ice down the mountain sides. In
 order to reduce the great velocity
 they would acquire were the chuteS
 perfectly straight, curves are intro
 duced here and there to impede It.
 But ice quarrying is not unknown
 in this country, Crook county, Ore
 gon. especially the southern portion,
 is pretty far removed from the tra-
 ditional idea of Paradise, although
 irrigation in recent years has done
 something to render it more habit able. The region is of volcanic ori-
 gin and a great lava bed bounds one portion of it, from beneath which comes the sound of rushing waters, but inaccessible water In this al most desert region one can well inn agine what a gOdsend a lump of ice would be And there it is close at hand and not far from Bend, hidden away in a cave.
 The entrance to this cave, which is at least fifteen miles from any wat CT, is about 4,0O0 feet above the level of the sea This entrance is small. From it you go down a declivity of some fifty feet, when you reach a chamber with a floor of ice. From there you pass through a narrow en- trance into an inner chamber which contains an inexhaustible supply of l ice A block is quarried out and within three hours the cavity is filled with water which is soon turned into solid ice.
 Geologists are puzzled over an ex- planation of this extraordinary phe- | nomenon. The best offered so far | seems to be that the water trickles | through the volcanic rock from the l Deschutes river, which takes a re- markably winding course at an ele- vation much higher than that of the | cave.
 But even more remarkable is 1t | that ice should be quarried on the sides of the famous Sicilian volcano, Mount Aetna Were the Sicilans a little more energetic no doubt Messina would have been supplied before the earthquake razed it with all the ice it needed by a Mount Aetna Ice Quarrying Company" and beautiful Taormina would not have to rely on Sweden and Norway for it's supply. As it is the industry is carried on in a desultory manner. Aetna is
 10.849 feet high and during the win
 ter is snow capped. Whenever an
 eruption occurs the fragments of
 rock and ashes thrown out of the
 crater spread over the snow which