The unlucky glacier reminds me at his latter end of a wretched
whale stranded on a beach, dissolving into masses of blubber, and hacked
by remorseless fishermen, instead of plunging at his ease in the deep
blue water. Far above, where the glacier begins his course, he is seen
only by the true mountaineer. There are vast amphitheatres of pure snow,
of which the glacier known to tourists is merely the insignificant
drainage, but whose very existence they do not generally suspect. They
are utterly ignorant that from the top of the icefall which they visit
you may walk for hours on the eternal ice. After a long climb you come
to the region where the glacier is truly at its noblest; where the
surface is a spotless white; where the crevasses are enormous rents
sinking to profound depths, with walls of the purest blue; where the
glacier is torn and shattered by the energetic forces which mould it,
but has an expression of superabundant power, like a full stream
fretting against its banks and plunging through the vast gorges that it
has hewn for itself in the course of centuries.
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