ensemble of geological phenomena seems to prove, not the prevalence of this glacial surface on which you would carry along your boulders, but a very high temperature spreading almost to the poles, a temperature favorable to organizations resembling those now living in the tropics. Your ice frightens me, and gladly as I would welcome you here, my dear friend, I think, perhaps, for the sake of your health, and also that you may not see this country, always so hideous, under a sheet of snow and ice (in February), you would do better to come two months later, with the first verdure. This is suggested by a letter received yesterday by M. d’O–, which alarmed me a little, because the state of your eyes obliged you to write by another hand. Pray do not think of traveling before you are quite well. I close this letter, feeling sure that it does not contain a line which is not an expression of friendship and of the high esteem I bear you. The magnificence of your last numbers, eight and nine, cannot be told. How admirably executed are your Macropoma, the Ophiopris procerus, Mantell’s great beast, the minute details of the Dercetis, Psammodus,. . .the skeletons. . . There is nothing like it in all that we possess upon vertebrates. I have also begun to study your text, so rich in well arranged facts; the monograph of the Lepidostei, the passage upon the bony rays, and, dear Agassiz, I could hardly believe my eyes, sixty-five continuous pages of the third volume, without interruption! You will spoil the public. But, my good friend, you have already information upon a thousand species; “claudite jam rivos!” You say your work can go on if you have two hundred subscribers; but if you continue to support two traveling draughtsmen, I predict, as a practical man, that it cannot go on. You cannot even publish what you have gathered in the last five years. Consider that in attempting to give a review of all the fossil fishes which now exist in collections, you pursue a phantom which ever flies before you. Such a work would not be finished in less than fifteen years, and besides, this NOW is an uncertain element. Cannot you conquer yourself so far as to finish what you have in your possession at present? Recall your artists. With the reputation you enjoy in Europe, whatever might essentially change your opinion on certain organisms would willingly be sent to you. If you continue to keep two ambassadors in foreign lands, the means you destine for the engraving and printing will soon be absorbed. You will struggle with domestic difficulties, and at sixty years of age (tremble at the sight of this number!) you will be as uncertain as you are to-day, whether you possess, even in your collection of drawings, all that is to be found among amateurs. How exhaust an ocean in which the species are indefinitely increasing? Finish, first, what you have this December, 1837, and then, if the subject does not weary you, publish the supplements in 1847. You must not forget that these supplements will be of two kinds: 1st. Ideas which modify some of your old views. 2nd. New species. Only the first kind of supplement would be really desirable. Furthermore, you must regain your intellectual independence and not let yourself be scolded any more by M. de Humboldt. Little will it avail you should I vanish from the scene of this world with your fourteenth number! When I am a fossil in my turn I shall still appear to you as a ghost, having under my arm the pages you have failed to interpolate and the volume of that eternal America which I owe to the public. I close with a touch of fun, in order that my letter may seem a little less like preaching. A thousand affectionate remembrances. No more ice, not much of echinoderms, plenty of fish, recall of ambassadors in partibus, and great severity toward the book-sellers, an infernal race, two or three of whom have been killed under me.
A. DE HUMBOLDT.
I sigh to think of the trouble my horrible writing will give you.
A letter of about the same date from Von Buch shows that, however he might storm at Agassiz’s heterodox geology, he was in full sympathy with his work in general.
LEOPOLD VON BUCH TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.
December 22, 1837.
. . .Pray reinstate me in the good graces of my unknown benefactor among you. By a great mistake the reports of the Society forwarded to me from Neuchatel have been sent back. As it is well known at the post-office that I do not keep the piles of educational journals sent to me from France, the postage on them being much too heavy for my means, they took it for granted that this journal, the charges on which amounted to several crowns, was of the number. I am very sorry. I do not even know the contents of the journal, but I suppose it contained papers of yours, full of genius and ardor. I like your way of looking at nature, and I think you render great service to science by your observations. A right spirit will readily lead you to see that this is the true road to glory, far preferable to the one which leads to vain analogies and speculations, the time for which is long past. I am grieved to hear that you are not well, and that your eyes refuse their service. M. de Humboldt tells me that you are seeking a better climate here, in the month of February. You may find it, perhaps, thanks to our stoves. But as we shall still have plenty of ice in the streets, your glacial opinions will not find a market at that season. I should like to present you with a memoir or monograph of mine, just published, on Spirifer and Orthis, but I will take good care to let no one pay postage on a work which, by its nature, can have but a very limited interest. . .I will await your arrival to give you these descriptions. I am expecting the numbers of your Fossil Fishes, which have not yet come. Humboldt often speaks of them to me. Ah! how much I prefer you in a field which is wholly your own than in one where you break in upon the measured and cautious tread, introduced by Saussure in geology. You, too, will reconsider all this, and will yet treat the views of Saussure and Escher with more respect. Everything here turns to infusoria. Ehrenberg has just discovered that an apparently sandy deposit, twenty feet in thickness, under the “Luneburgerheyde,” is composed entirely of infusoria of a kind still living in the neighborhood of Berlin. This layer rests upon a brown deposit known to be ten feet in thickness. The latter consists, for one fifth of the depth, of pine pollen, which burns. The rest is of infusoria. Thus these animals, which the naked eye has not power to discern, have themselves the power to build up mountain chains. . .
CHAPTER 9.
1837-1839: AGE 30-32.
Invitation to Professorships at Geneva and Lausanne. Death of his Father.
Establishment of Lithographic Press at Neuchatel. Researches upon Structure of Mollusks.
Internal Casts of Shells.
Glacial Explorations.
Views of Buckland.
Relations with Arnold Guyot.
Their Work together in the Alps.
Letter to Sir Philip Egerton concerning Glacial Work. Summer of 1839.
Publication of “Etudes sur les Glaciers.”
Although Agassiz’s daring treatment of the glacial phenomena had excited much opposition and angry comment, it had also made a powerful impression by its eloquence and originality. To this may be partly due the fact that about this time he was strongly urged from various quarters to leave Neuchatel for some larger field. One of the most seductive of these invitations, owing to the affectionate spirit in which it was offered, came through Monsieur de la Rive, in Geneva.
M. AUGUSTE DE LA RIVE TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.
GENEVA, May 12, 1836.
. . .I have not yet received your address. I hope you will send it to me without delay, for I am anxious to bring it before our readers. I hope also that you will not forget what you have promised me for the “Bibliotheque Universelle.” I am exceedingly anxious to have your cooperation; the more so that it will reinforce that of several distinguished savants whose assistance I have recently secured.
If I weary you with a second letter, however, it is not only to remind you of your promise about the “Bibliotheque Universelle,” but for another object still more important and urgent. The matter stands thus. Our academic courses have just opened under favorable auspices. The number of students is much increased, and, especially, we have a good many from Germany and England. This circumstance makes us feel more strongly the importance of completing our organization, and of doing this wisely and quickly. I will not play the diplomat with you, but will frankly say, without circumlocution, that you seem to me the one essential, the one indispensable man. After having talked with some influential persons here, I feel sure that if you say to me, “I will come,” I can obtain for you the following conditions: 1st. A regular salary of three thousand francs, beside the student fees, which, in view of the character of your instruction, your reputation, and the novelty of your course, I place too low at a thousand francs; of this I am convinced. 2nd. The vacant professorship is one of geology and mineralogy, but should you wish it De la Planche will continue to teach the mineralogy, and you will replace it by paleontology, or any other subject which may suit you. . .Add to this resource that of a popular course for the world outside, ladies and others, which you might give in the winter, as at Neuchatel. The custom here is to pay fifty francs for the course of from twenty-five to thirty lectures. You will easily see that for such a course you would have at least as large an audience here as at Neuchatel. This is the more likely because there is a demand for these courses, Pictet being dead, and M. Rossi and M. de Castella having ceased to give them. No one has come forward as their heir, fine as the inheritance is; some are too busy, others have not the kind of talent needed, and none have attempted to replace these gentlemen in this especial line, one in which you excel, both by your gifts and your fortunate choice of a subject more in vogue just now than any other. Come then, to work in this rich vein before others present themselves for the same purpose. Finally, since I must make up your budget, the “Bibliotheque Universelle,” which pays fifty francs a sheet, would be always open to you; there you could bring the fruits of your productive leisure. Certainly it would be easy for you to make in this way an additional thousand francs.
Here, then, is a statement, precise and full, of the condition of things, and of what you may hope to find here. The moment is propitious; there is a movement among us just now in favor of the sciences, and this winter the plan of a large building for our museum and library will be presented to our common council. The work should begin next summer; you well know how much we should value your ideas and your advice on this subject. There may also be question of a director for the museum, and of an apartment for him in the new edifice; you will not doubt to whom such a place would be offered. But let us not draw upon the future; let us limit ourselves to the present, and see whether what I propose suits you . . .Come! let yourself be persuaded. Sacrifice the capital to a provincial town. At Berlin, no doubt, you would be happy and honored; at Geneva, you would be the happiest, the most honored. Look at–, who shone as a star of the first magnitude at Geneva, and who is but a star of second or third rank in Paris. This, to be sure, would not be your case; nevertheless, I am satisfied that at Geneva, where you would be a second de Saussure, your position would be still more brilliant. I know that these motives of scientific self-love have little weight with you; nevertheless, wishing to omit nothing, I give them for what they are worth. But my hope rests far more on the arguments I have first presented; they come from the heart, and with you the heart responds as readily as the genius. But enough! I will not fatigue you with farther considerations. I think I have given you all the points necessary for your decision. Be so kind as to let me know as soon as possible what you intend to do. Have the kindness also not to speak of the contents of this letter, and remember that it is not the Rector of the Academy of Geneva, but the Professor Auguste de la Rive, who writes in his own private person. Promptitude and silence, then, are the two recommendations which I make to you while we await the Yes we so greatly desire. . .
More tempting still must have been the official invitation received a few months later to a professorship at Lausanne, strengthened as it was by the affectionate entreaties of relations and friends, urging him for the sake of family ties and patriotism to return to the canton where he had passed his earlier years. But he had cast in his lot with the Neuchatelois and was proof against all arguments. He remained faithful to the post he had chosen until he left it, temporarily as he then believed, to come to America. The citizens of his adopted town expressed their appreciation of his loyalty to them in a warm letter of thanks, begging, at the same time, his acceptance of the sum of six thousand francs, payable by installments during three years.
The summer of 1837 was a sad one to Agassiz and to his whole family; his father died at Concise, carried off by a fever while still a comparatively young man. The pretty parsonage, to which they were so much attached, passed into other hands, and thenceforward the home of Madame Agassiz was with her children, among whom she divided her time.
In 1838 Agassiz founded a lithographic printing establishment in Neuchatel, which was carried on for many years under his direction. Thus far his plates had been lithographed in Munich. Their execution at such a distance involved constant annoyance, and sometimes great waste of time and money, in sending the proofs to and fro for correction. The scheme of establishing a lithographic press, to be in a great degree at his charge, was certainly an imprudent one for a poor man; but Agassiz hoped not only to facilitate his own publications by this means, but also to raise the standard of execution in works of a purely scientific character. Supported partly by his own exertions, partly by the generosity of others, the establishment was almost exclusively dependent upon him for its unceasing activity. He was fortunate in securing for its head M. Hercule Nicolet, a very able lithographic artist, who had had much experience in engraving objects of natural history, and was specially versed in the recently invented art of chromatic lithography.
Agassiz was now driving all his steeds abreast. Beside his duties as professor, he was printing at the same time his “Fossil Fishes,” his “Fresh-Water Fishes,” and his investigations on fossil Echinoderms and Mollusks,–the illustrations for all these various works being under his daily supervision. The execution of these plates, under M. Nicolet’s care, was admirable for the period. Professor Arnold Guyot, in his memoir of Agassiz, says of the plates for the “Fresh-Water Fishes”: “We wonder at their beauty, and at their perfection of color and outline, when we remember that they were almost the first essays of the newly-invented art of lithochromy, produced at a time when France and Belgium were showering rewards on very inferior work of the kind, as the foremost specimens of progress in the art.”
All this work could hardly be carried on single handed. In 1837 M. Edouard Desor joined Agassiz in Neuchatel, and became for many years his intimate associate in scientific labors. A year or two later M. Charles Vogt also united himself to the band of investigators and artists who had clustered about Agassiz as their central force. M. Ernest Favre says of this period of his life: “He displayed during these years an incredible energy, of which the history of science offers, perhaps, no other example.”
Among his most important zoological researches at this time were those upon mollusks. His method of studying this class was too original and too characteristic to be passed by without notice. The science of conchology had heretofore been based almost wholly upon the study of the empty shells. To Agassiz this seemed superficial. Longing to know more of the relation between the animal and its outer covering, he bethought himself that the inner moulding of the shell would give at least the form of its old inhabitant. For the practical work he engaged an admirable moulder, M. Stahl, who continued to be one of his staff at the lithographic establishment until he became permanently employed at the Jardin des Plantes. With his help and that of M. Henri Ladame, professor of physics and chemistry at Neuchatel, who prepared the delicate metal alloys in which the first mould was taken, Agassiz obtained casts in which the form of the animals belonging to the shells was perfectly reproduced. This method has since passed into universal use. By its aid he obtained a new means of ascertaining the relations between fossil and living mollusks. It was of vast service to him in preparing his “Etudes critiques sur les Mollusques fossiles,”–a quarto volume with nearly one hundred plates.
The following letter to Sir Philip Egerton gives some account of his undertakings at this time, and of the difficulties entailed upon him by their number and variety.
LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.
NEUCHATEL, August 10, 1838.
. . .These last months have been a time of trial to me, and I have been forced to give up my correspondence completely in order to meet the ever-increasing demands of my work. You know how difficult it is to find a quiet moment and an easy mind for writing, when one is pursued by printing or lithographic proofs, and forced besides to prepare unceasing occupation for numerous employees. Add to this the close research required by the work of editing, and you surely will find an excuse for my delay. I think I have already written you that in order to have everything under my own eye, I had founded a lithographic establishment at Neuchatel in the hope of avoiding in future the procrastinations to which my proofs were liable when the work was done at Munich. . .I hope that my new publications will be sufficiently well received to justify me in supporting an establishment unique of its kind, which I have founded solely in the interest of science and at the risk of my peace and my health. If I give you all these details, it is simply to explain my silence, which was caused not by pure negligence, but by the demands of an undertaking in the success of which my very existence is involved. . .This week I shall forward to the Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science all that I have been able to do thus far, being unable to bring it myself, as I had hoped. You would oblige me greatly if you would give a look at these different works, which may, I hope, have various claims on your interest. First, there is the tenth number of the “Fossil Fishes,” though the whole supply of publisher’s copies will only be sent a few weeks later. Then there are the seven first plates of my sea-urchins, engraved with much care and with many details. A third series of plates relates to critical studies on fossil mollusks, little or erroneously known, and on their internal casts. This is a quite novel side of the study of shells, and will throw light on the organization of animals known hitherto only by the shell. I have made a plaster collection of them for the Geological Society. They have been packed some time, but my late journey to Paris has prevented me from forwarding them till now. As soon as I have a moment, I shall make out the catalogue and send it on. When you go to London, do not fail to examine them; the result is curious enough. Finally, the plates for the first number of my “Fresh-Water Fishes” are in great part finished, and also included in my package for Newcastle. . .The plates are executed by a new process, and printed in various tints on different stones, resulting in a remarkable uniformity of coloring in all the impressions. . .
Such are the new credentials with which I present myself, as I bring my thanks for the honor paid to me by my nomination for the vacancy in the Royal Society of London. If unbounded devotion to the interests of science constituted a sufficient title to such a distinction, I should be the less surprised at the announcement contained in your last letter. The action of the Royal Society, so flattering to the candidate of your choice, has satisfied a desire which I should hardly have dared to form for many a year,–that of becoming a member of a body so illustrious as the Royal Society of London. . .
Each time I write I wish I could close with the hope of seeing you soon; but I must work incessantly; that is my lot, and the happiness I find in it gives a charm to my occupations however numerous they may be. . .
While Agassiz’s various zoological works were thus pressed with unceasing activity, the glaciers and their attendant phenomena, which had so captivated his imagination, were ever present to his thought. In August of the year 1838, a year after he had announced at the meeting of the Helvetic Society his comprehensive theory respecting the action of ice over the whole northern hemisphere, he made two important excursions in the Alps. The first was to the valley of Hassli, the second to the glaciers of Mont Blanc. In both he was accompanied by his scientific collaborator, M. Desor, whose intrepidity and ardor hardly fell short of his own; by Mr. Dinkel as artist, and by one or two students and friends. These excursions were a kind of prelude to his more prolonged sojourns on the Alps, and to the series of observations carried on by him and his companions, which attracted so much attention in later years. But though Agassiz carried with him, on these first explorations, only the simplest means of investigation and experiment, they were no amateur excursions. On these first Alpine journeys he had in his mind the sketch he meant to fill out. The significance of the phenomena was already clear to him. What he sought was the connection. Following the same comparative method, he intended to track the footsteps of the ice as he had gathered and put together the fragments of his fossil fishes, till the scattered facts should fall into their natural order once more and tell their story from beginning to end.
In his explorations of 1838 he found everywhere the same phenomena; the grooved and polished and graven surfaces and the rounded and modeled rocks, often lying far above and beyond the present limits of the glaciers; the old moraines, long deserted by the ice, but defining its ancient frontiers; the erratic blocks, transported far from their place of origin and disposed in an order and position unexplained by the agency of water.
These excursions, though not without their dangers and fatigues, were full of charm for men who, however serious their aims, were still young enough to enter like boys into the spirit of adventure. Agassiz himself was but thirty-one; an ardent pedestrian, he delighted in feats of walking and climbing. His friend Dinkel relates that one day, while pausing at Grindelwald for refreshment, they met an elderly traveler who asked him, after listening awhile to their gay talk, in which appeals were constantly made to “Agassiz,” if that was perhaps the son of the celebrated professor of Neuchatel. The answer amazed him; he could hardly believe that the young man before him was the naturalist of European reputation. In connection with this journey occurs the first attempt at an English letter found among Agassiz’s papers. It is addressed to Buckland, and contains this passage: “Since I saw the glaciers I am quite of a snowy humor, and will have the whole surface of the earth covered with ice, and the whole prior creation dead by cold. In fact, I am quite satisfied that ice must be taken [included] in every complete explanation of the last changes which occurred at the surface of Europe.” Considered in connection with their subsequent work together in the ancient ice-beds and moraines of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, it is curious to find Buckland answering: “I am sorry that I cannot entirely adopt the new theory you advocate to explain transported blocks by moraines; for supposing it adequate to explain the phenomena of Switzerland, it would not apply to the granite blocks and transported gravel of England, which I can only explain by referring to currents of water.” During the same summer Mrs. Buckland writes from Interlaken, in the course of a journey in Switzerland with her husband. . .”We have made a good tour of the Oberland and have seen glaciers, etc., but Dr. Buckland is as far as ever from agreeing with you.” We shall see hereafter how completely he became a convert to Agassiz’s glacial theory in its widest acceptation.
One friend, scarcely mentioned thus far in this biography, was yet, from the beginning, the close associate of Agassiz’s glacier work. Arnold Guyot and he had been friends from boyhood. Their university life separated them for a time, Guyot being at Berlin while Agassiz was at Munich, and they became colleagues at Neuchatel only after Agassiz had been for some years established there. From that time forward there was hardly any break in their intercourse; they came to America at about the same time, and finally settled as professors, the one at Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the other at the College of New Jersey, in Princeton. They shared all their scientific interests; and when they were both old men, Guyot brought to Agassiz’s final undertaking, the establishment of a summer school at Penikese, a cooperation as active and affectionate as that he had given in his youth to his friend’s scheme for establishing a permanent scientific summer station in the high Alps.
In a short visit made by Agassiz to Paris in the spring of 1838 he unfolded his whole plan to Guyot, then residing there, and persuaded him to undertake a certain part of the investigation. During this very summer of 1838, therefore, while Agassiz was tracing the ancient limits of the ice in the Bernese Oberland and the Haut Valais, and later, in the valley of Chamounix, Guyot was studying the structure and movement of the ice during a six weeks’ tour in the central Alps. At the conclusion of their respective journeys they met to compare notes, at the session of the Geological Society of France, at Porrentruy, where Agassiz made a report upon the general results of his summer’s work; while Guyot read a paper, the contents of which have never been fully published, upon the movement of glaciers and upon their internal features, including the laminated structure of the ice, the so-called blue bands, deep down in the mass of the glacier.* (* See “Memoir of Louis Agassiz” by Arnold Guyot, written for the United States National Academy of Sciences, page 38.) In the succeeding years of their glacial researches together, Guyot took for his share the more special geological problems, the distribution of erratic boulders and of the glacial drift, as connected with the ancient extension of the glaciers. This led him away from the central station of observation to remoter valleys on the northern and southern slopes of the Alps, where he followed the descent of the glacial phenomena to the plains of central Europe on the one side and to those of northern Italy on the other. We therefore seldom hear of him with the band of workers who finally settled on the glacier of the Aar, because his share of the undertaking became a more isolated one. It was nevertheless an integral part of the original scheme, which was carried on connectedly to the end, the results of the work in the different departments being constantly reported and compared. So much was this the case, that the intention of Agassiz had been to embody the whole in a publication, the first part of which should contain the glacial system of Agassiz; the second the Alpine erratics, by Guyot; while the third and final portion, by E. Desor, should treat of the erratic phenomena outside of Switzerland. The first volume alone was completed. Unlooked for circumstances made the continuation of the work impossible, and the five thousand specimens of the erratic rocks of Switzerland collected by Professor Guyot, in preparation for his part of the publication, are now deposited in the College of New Jersey, at Princeton.
In the following summer of 1839 Agassiz took the chain of Monte Rosa and Matterhorn as the field of a larger and more systematic observation. On this occasion, the usual party consisting of Agassiz, Desor, M. Bettanier, an artist, and two or three other friends, was joined by the geologist Studer. Up to this time he had been a powerful opponent of Agassiz’s views, and his conversion to the glacial theory during this excursion was looked upon by them all as a victory greater than any gained over the regions of ice and snow. Some account of this journey occurs in the following letter.
LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.
NEUCHATEL, September 10, 1839.
. . .Under these circumstances, I thought I could not do better than to pass some weeks in the solitude of the high Alps; I lived about a fortnight in the region of the glaciers, ascending some new field of ice every day, and trying to scale the sides of our highest peaks. I thus examined in succession all the glaciers descending from the majestic summits of Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn, whose numerous crests form a most gigantic amphitheatre, which lifts itself above the everlasting snow. Afterward I visited the sea of ice which, under the name of the glacier of Aletsch, flows from the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the Eiger toward Brieg; thence I went to the glacier of the Rhone, and from there, establishing my headquarters at the Hospice of the Grimsel, I followed the glacier of the Aar to the foot of the Finsteraarhorn. There I ascertained the most important fact that I now know concerning the advance of glaciers, namely, that the cabin constructed by Hugi in 1827, at the foot of the Abschwung, is now four thousand feet lower down. Slight as is the inclination of the glacier, this cabin has been carried on by the ice with astonishing rapidity, and still more important is it that this rapidity has been on the increase; for in 1830 the cabin was only some hundred feet from the rock, in 1836 it had already passed over a distance from [word torn away] of two thousand feet, and in the last three years it has again doubled that distance. Not only have I confirmed my views upon glaciers and their attendant phenomena, on this new ground, but I have completed my examination of a number of details, and have had besides the satisfaction of convincing one of my most severe opponents of the exactness of my observations, namely, M. Studer, who accompanied me on a part of these excursions. . .
The winter of 1840 was fully occupied by the preparation for the publication of the “Etudes sur les Glaciers,” which appeared before the year was out, accompanied by an atlas of thirty-two plates. The volume of text consisted of an historical resume of all that had previously been done in the study of glaciers, followed by an account of the observations of Agassiz and his companions during the last three or four years upon the glaciers of the Alps. Their structure, external aspect, needles, tables, perched blocks, gravel cones, rifts, and crevasses, as well as their movements, mode of formation, and internal temperature, were treated in succession. But the most interesting chapters, from the author’s own point of view, and those which were most novel for his readers, were the concluding ones upon the ancient extension of the Swiss glaciers, and upon the former existence of an immense, unbroken sheet of ice, which had once covered the whole northern hemisphere. No one before had drawn such vast conclusions from the local phenomena of the Alpine valleys. “The surface of Europe,” says Agassiz, “adorned before by a tropical vegetation and inhabited by troops of large elephants, enormous hippopotami, and gigantic carnivora, was suddenly buried under a vast mantle of ice, covering alike plains, lakes, seas and plateaus. Upon the life and movement of a powerful creation fell the silence of death. Springs paused, rivers ceased to flow, the rays of the sun, rising upon this frozen shore (if, indeed, it was reached by them), were met only by the breath of the winter from the north and the thunders of the crevasses as they opened across the surface of this icy sea.”* (* “Etudes sur les Glaciers” Chapter 8 page 35.) The author goes on to state that on the breaking up of this universal shroud the ice must have lingered longest in mountainous strongholds, and that all these fastnesses of retreat became, as the Alps are now, centres of distribution for the broken debris and rocky fragments which are found scattered with a kind of regularity along certain lines, and over given areas in northern and central Europe. How he followed out this idea in his subsequent investigations will be seen hereafter.
CHAPTER 10.
1840-1842: AGE 33-35.
Summer Station on the Glacier of the Aar. Hotel des Neuchatelois.
Members of the Party.
Work on the Glacier.
Ascent of the Strahleck and the Siedelhorn. Visit to England.
Search for Glacial Remains in Great Britain. Roads of Glen Roy.
Views of English Naturalists concerning Agassiz’s Glacial Theory. Letter from Humboldt.
Winter Visit to Glacier.
Summer of 1841 on the Glacier.
Descent into the Glacier.
Ascent of the Jungfrau.
In the summer of 1840 Agassiz made his first permanent station on the Alps. Hitherto the external phenomena, the relation of the ice to its surroundings, and its influence upon them, had been the chief study. Now the glacier itself was to be the main subject of investigation, and he took with him a variety of instruments for testing temperatures: barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, and psychometers; beside a boring apparatus, by means of which self-registering thermometers might be lowered into the heart of the glacier. To these were added microscopes for the study of such insects and plants as might be found in these ice-bound regions. The Hospice of the Grimsel was selected as his base of supplies, and as guides Jacob Leuthold 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 find sleeping-room. A recess, sheltered by the rock outside, served as kitchen and dining-room; while an empty space under another large boulder was utilized as a cellar for the keeping of provisions. This was the abode so well known afterward as the Hotel des Neuchatelois. Its first occupants were Louis Agassiz, Edouard Desor, Charles Vogt, Francois de Pourtales, Celestin Nicolet, and Henri Coulon. It afforded, perhaps, as good a shelter as they could have found in the old cabin of Hugi, where they had hoped to make their temporary home. In this they were disappointed, for the cabin had crumbled on its last glacial journey. The wreck was lying two hundred feet below the spot where they had seen the walls still standing the year before.
The work was at once distributed among the different members of the party,–Agassiz himself, assisted by his young friend and favorite pupil, Francois de Pourtales, retaining for his own share the meteorological observations, and especially those upon the internal temperature of the glaciers.* (* See “Tables of Temperature, Measurements” 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 microscopic study of the red snow and the organic life contained in it; to M. Nicolet, the flora of the glaciers and the surrounding rocks; to M. Desor, the glacial phenomena proper, including those of the moraines. He had the companionship and assistance of M. Henri Coulon in the long and laborious excursions required for this part of the work.
This is not the place for scientific details. For the results of Agassiz’s researches on the Alpine glaciers, to which he devoted much of his time and energy during ten years, from 1836 to 1846, the reader is referred to his two larger works on this subject, the “Etudes sur les Glaciers,” and the “Systeme Glaciaire.” Of the work accomplished by him and his companions during these years this slight summary is given by 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 the glacier, as well as in different seasons of the year, was ascertained; the amount of the annual melting was computed, and all the phenomena connected with it studied. All the surrounding peaks,–the Jungfrau, the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, most of them until then reputed unscalable,–were ascended, and the limit of glacial action discovered; in short all the physical laws of the glacier were brought to light.”
We now return to the personal narrative. After a number of days spent in the study of the local phenomena, the band of workers turned their attention to the second part of their programme, namely, the ascent of the Strahleck, by crossing which and descending on the other side, they intended to reach Grindelwald. One morning, then, toward the end of August, their guides, according to agreement, aroused them at three o’clock,–an hour earlier than their usual roll-call. The first glance outside spread a general chill of disappointment over the party, for they found themselves beleaguered by a wall of fog on every side. But Leuthold, as he 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 instruments which required careful handling. They began the ascent in single file, but the slopes soon became so steep and the light snow (in which they floundered to the knees at every step) so deep, that the guides resorted to the usual method in such cases of tying them all together. The two head guides alone, Leuthold and Wahren, remained detached, clearing the snow in front of them, cutting steps in the ice, and giving warning, by cry and gesture, of any hidden danger in the path. At nine o’clock, after an hour’s climbing, they stepped upon the small plateau, evenly covered with unbroken snow, formed by the summit of the Strahleck.
The day had proved magnificent. With a clear sky above them, they looked down upon the valley of Grindelwald at their feet, while around and below them gathered the Scheideck and the Faulhorn, the pyramidal outline of the Niesen, and the chain of the Stockhorn. In front lay the great masses of the Eiger and the Monch, while to the southwest the Jungfrau rose above the long chain of the Viescherhorner. 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 her young, ascending a neighboring slope, and presently four or five more stretched their necks over a rock, as if to see what was going on. Breathless the wrestlers and the dancers paused, fearing to disturb by the slightest movement creatures so shy of human approach. They drew nearer until within easy gunshot distance, and then galloping along the opposite ridge disappeared over the summit.”
The party passed more than an hour on the top of the Strahleck, making observations and taking measurements. Then having rested and broken their fast with such provisions as they had brought, they prepared for a descent, which proved the more rapid, since much of it was a long slide. Tied together once more, they slid, wherever they found it possible to exchange the painful and difficult walking for this simpler process. “Once below these slopes of snow,” says the journal of young de Pourtales again, “rocks almost vertical, or narrow ledges covered with grass, served us as a road and brought us to the glacier of the Grindelwald. To reach the glacier itself we traversed a crevasse 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 their last visit to them. After a short rest at the Hospice of the Grimsel, Agassiz returned with two or three of his companions to their hut on the Aar glacier for the purpose of driving stakes into the holes previously bored in the ice. He hoped by means of these stakes to learn the following year what had been the rate of movement of the glacier. The summer’s work closed with the ascent of the Siedelhorn. In all these ascents, the utmost pains was taken to ascertain how far the action of the ice might be traced upon these mountain peaks and the limits determined at which the polished surfaces ceased, giving place to the rough, angular rock which had never been modeled by the ice.
Agassiz had hardly returned from the Alps when he started for England. He had long believed that the Highlands of Scotland, the hilly Lake Country of England, and the mountains of Wales and Ireland, would present the same phenomena as the valleys of the Alps. Dr. Buckland had offered to be his guide in this search after glacier tracks, as he had formerly been in the hunt after fossil fishes in Great Britain. When, therefore, the meeting of the British Association at Glasgow, at which they were both present, was over, they started together for the Highlands. In a lecture delivered by Agassiz, at his summer school at Penikese, a few months before his death, he recurred to this journey with the enthusiasm of a young man. Recalling the scientific isolation in which he then stood, opposed as he was to all the prominent geologists of the day, he said: “Among the older naturalists, only one stood by me. Dr. Buckland, Dean of Westminster, who had come to Switzerland at my urgent request for the express purpose of seeing my evidence, and who had been fully convinced of the ancient extension of ice there, consented to accompany me on my glacier hunt in Great Britain. We went first to the Highlands of Scotland, and it is one of the delightful recollections of my life that as we approached the castle of the Duke of Argyll, standing in a valley not unlike some of the 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 time by neighboring glaciers descending from more sheltered valleys. The terraces marked the successively lower levels at which the water stood, as these barriers yielded, and allowed its gradual escape.* (* For details, see a paper by Agassiz on “The Glacial Theory and its Recent Progress” in the “Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal” October 1842, accompanied by a map of the Glen Roy region, and also an article entitled “Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, in Scotland,” in the second volume of Agassiz’s “Geological Sketches”.) The glacial action in the whole neighborhood was such as to leave no doubt in the mind of Agassiz that Glen Roy and the adjoining glens, or valleys, had been the drainage-bed for the many glaciers formerly occupying the western ranges of the Grampian Hills. He returned from his tour satisfied that the mountainous districts of Great Britain had all been centres of glacial distribution, and that the drift material and the erratic boulders, scattered over the whole country, were due to exactly the same causes as the like phenomena in Switzerland. On the 4th of November, 1840, he read a paper before the Geological Society of London, giving a summary of the scientific results of their excursion, followed by one from Dr. Buckland, who had become an ardent convert to his views. Apropos of this meeting, Dr. Buckland writes in advance as follows:–
TAYMOUTH CASTLE, October 15, 1840.
. . .Lyell has adopted your theory in toto!!! On my showing him a beautiful cluster of moraines, within two miles of his father’s house, he instantly accepted it, as solving a host of difficulties that have all his life embarrassed him. And not these only, but similar 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 after yours at the Geological Society. I propose to give in my adhesion by reading, the same day with yours, as a sequel to your paper, a list of localities where I have observed similar glacial detritus in Scotland, since I left you, and in various parts of England.
There are great reefs of gravel in the limestone valleys of the central bog district of Ireland. They have a distinct name, which I forget. No doubt they are moraines; if you have not, ere you get this, seen one of them, 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. ) But it will not be worth while to go out of your way to see more than one; all the rest must follow as a corollary. I trust you will not fail to be at Edinboro’ on the 20th, and at Sir W. Trevelyan’s on the 24th. . .
A letter of later date in the same month shows that Agassiz felt his views to be slowly gaining ground among his English friends.
LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.
LONDON, November 24, 1840.
. . .Our meeting on Wednesday passed off very well; none of my facts were disturbed, though Whewell and Murchison attempted an opposition; but as their objections were far-fetched, they 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, and upon the want of solidity in the objections brought against them. Dr. Buckland was truly eloquent. He has now full possession of this subject; is, indeed, completely master of it.
I am happy to tell you that everything is definitely arranged with Lord Francis,* (* Apropos of the sale of his original drawings of fossil fishes to Lord Francis Egerton.) and that I now feel within myself a courage which doubles my strength. I have just written to thank him. To-morrow I shall devote to the fossils sent me by Lord Enniskillen, a list of which I will forward to you. . .
We append here, a little out of the regular course, a letter from Humboldt, which shows that he too was beginning to look more leniently upon Agassiz’s glacial conclusions.
HUMBOLDT TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.
BERLIN, August 15, 1840.
I am the most guilty of mortals, my dear friend. There are not three persons in the world whose remembrance and affection I value more than yours, 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 my warm gratitude for the magnificent gifts I owe to you.* (* Probably the plates of the “Fresh-Water Fishes” and other illustrated publications.)
I am a little like my republican friend who no longer answers any letters because he does not know where to begin. I receive on an average fifteen hundred letters a year. I never dictate. I hold that resort in horror. How dictate a letter to a scholar for whom one has a real regard? I allow myself to be drawn into answering the persons I know least, whose wrath is the most menacing. My nearer friends (and none are more dear to me than yourself) suffer from my silence. 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 my ardent desire to be useful. I act oftener than I answer. I know that I like to do good, and this consciousness gives me tranquillity in spite of my over burdened life. You are happy, my dear Agassiz, in the more simple and yet truly proud position which you have created for yourself. You ought to take satisfaction in it as the father of a family, as an illustrious savant, as the originator and source of so many new ideas, of so many great and noble conceptions.
Your admirable work on the fossil fishes draws to a close. The last number, so rich in discoveries, and the prospectus, explaining the true state of this vast publication, have soothed all irritation regarding 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 that a too great ardor might cause you irreparable losses. You have shown not only what a talent like yours can accomplish, but also how a noble courage can triumph over seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
In what words shall I tell you how greatly our admiration is increased by this new work of yours on the Fresh-Water Fishes? Nothing has appeared more admirable, more perfect in drawing and color. This chromatic lithography resembles nothing we have had thus far. What taste has directed the publication! Then the short descriptions accompanying 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 ordered the same number of copies of the Fresh-Water Fishes as of the Fossil Fishes; that is to say, ten copies. M. de Werther has already received the order. This is, to be sure, but a slight help; still, it is all that I have been able to obtain, and these few copies, with the king’s name as subscriber, will always be useful to you.
I cannot close this letter without asking your pardon for some expressions, too sharp, perhaps, in my former letters, about your vast geological conceptions. The very exaggeration of my expressions must have shown you how little weight I attached to my objections. . .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 listen to a friendly voice like yours? I am interested in whatever is printed on these topics; so, if you have published anything at all complete lately on the ensemble of your geological ideas, have the great kindness to send it to me through a book-seller. . .
Shall I tell you anything of my own poor and superannuated works? The sixth volume is wanting to my “Geography of the Fifteenth Century” (Examen Critique). It will appear this summer. I am also printing the second volume of a new work to be entitled “Central Asia.” It is not a second edition of “Asiatic Fragments,” but a new and wholly different work. The thirty-five sheets of the last volume are printed, but the two volumes will only be issued together. You can judge of the difficulty of printing at 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 read are poor however well prepared. Published courses of lectures are my detestation. Cotta is also printing a volume of mine in German, “Physikalische geographische Erinnerungen.” Many unpublished things concerning the volcanoes of the Andes, about currents, etc. And all this at the age when one begins to petrify! It is very rash! May this letter prove to you and to Madame Agassiz that I am petrifying only at the extremities, –the heart is still warm. Retain for me the affection which I hold so dear.
A. DE HUMBOLDT.
In the following winter, or, rather, in the early days of March, 1841, Agassiz visited, in company with M. Desor, the glacier of the Aar and that of Rosenlaui. He wished to examine the stakes planted the summer before on the glacier of the Aar, and to compare the winter and summer temperature within as well as without the mass of ice. But his chief object was to ascertain whether water still 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. The journey was, of course, a difficult one at such a season, but the weather was beautiful, and they accomplished it in safety, though not without much suffering. They found no water except the pure and limpid water from springs that never freeze. The glacier lay dead in the grasp of winter. The results of this journey, tables of temperature, etc., are recorded in the “Systeme Glaciaire.”
In E. Desor’s “Sejours dans les Glaciers” is found an interesting description of the incidents of this excursion and the appearance of the glaciers in winter. In ascending the course of the Aar they frequently crossed the shrunken river on natural snow bridges, and approaching the Handeck over fearfully steep slopes of snow they had some difficulty in finding the thread of water which was all that remained of the beautiful summer cascade. On the glacier of the Aar they found the Hotel des Neuchatelois buried in snow, 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 cloud, the air transparent, but the glitter of the uniform white surface was exquisitely painful to the eyes and skin, and the travelers were obliged to wrap their heads in double veils. They found the glacier of Rosenlaui less enveloped in snow than that of the Aar; and though the magnificent ice-cave, so well known to travelers for its azure tints, was inaccessible, they could look into the vault and see that the habitual bed of the torrent was dry. The journey was accomplished in a week without any untoward accident.
In the summer of 1841 Agassiz made a longer Alpine sojourn than ever before. The special objects of the season’s work were the internal structure of these vast moving fields of ice, the essential conditions of their origin and continued existence, the action of water within them as influencing their movement, and their own agency in direct contact with the beds and walls of the valleys they occupied. The fact of their former extension and their present oscillations might be considered as established. It remained to explain these facts with reference to the conditions prevailing within the mass itself. In short, the investigation was passing from the domain of geology to that of physics. Agassiz, who was as he often said of himself no physicist, was the more anxious to 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 plans for the summer, and who furnished him with a skilled workman to direct the boring operations, assist in measurements, etc. The artist of this year was M. Jacques Burkhardt, a personal friend of Agassiz, and his fellow-student at Munich, where he had spent some time at the school of art. As a draughtsman he was subsequently associated with Agassiz in his work at various times, and when they both settled in America Mr. Burkhardt became a permanent member of Agassiz’s household, accompanied him on his journeys, and remained with him in relations of uninterrupted and affectionate regard till his own death in 1867. He was a loyal friend and a warm-hearted man, with a thread of humor running through his dry good sense, which made him a very amusing and attractive companion.
As it was necessary, in view of his special programme of work, to penetrate below the surface of the glacier, and reach, if possible, its point of contact with the valley bottom, Agassiz had caused a larger boring apparatus than had been used before, to be transported to the old site on the Aar glacier. The results of these experiments are 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 been driven to a depth of one hundred and ten feet, dropped suddenly two feet lower, showing that it had passed through an open space hidden in the depth of the ice. The release of air-bubbles at the same time gave evidence that this glacial cave, so suddenly broken in upon, was not hermetically sealed to atmospheric influences from without.
Agassiz was not satisfied with the report of his instruments from these unknown regions. He determined to be lowered into one of the so-called wells in the glacier, and thus to visit its interior in person. For this purpose he was obliged to turn aside the stream which flowed into the well into a new bed which he caused to be dug for it. This done, he had a strong tripod erected over the opening, and, seated upon a board firmly attached by ropes, he was then let down into the well, his friend Escher lying flat on the edge of the precipice, to direct the descent and listen for any warning cry. Agassiz especially desired to ascertain how far the laminated or ribboned structure of the ice (the so-called blue bands) penetrated the mass of the glacier. This feature of the glacier had been observed and described by M. Guyot (see page 292), but Mr. Forbes 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 plunge of his feet into water. His first shout of distress was misunderstood, and his friends lowered him into the ice-cold gulf instead of raising him. The second cry was effectual, and he was drawn up, though not without great difficulty, from a depth of one hundred and twenty-five feet. The most serious peril of the ascent was caused by the huge stalactites of ice, between the points of which he had to steer his way. Any one of them, if detached by the friction of the rope, might have caused his death. He afterward said: “Had I known all its dangers, perhaps I should not have started on such an adventure. Certainly, unless induced by some powerful scientific motive, I should not advise any one to follow my example.” On this perilous journey he traced the laminated structure to a depth of eighty feet, and even beyond, though with less distinctness.
The summer closed with their famous ascent of the Jungfrau. The party consisted of twelve persons Agassiz, Desor, Forbes, Heath, and two travelers who had begged to join them,–M. de Chatelier, of Nantes, and M. de Pury, of Neuchatel, a former pupil of Agassiz. The other six were guides; four beside their old and tried friends, Jacob Leuthold and Johann Wahren. They left the hospice of the Grimsel on the 27th of August, at four o’clock in the 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 open space, filled with soft blue light. They were, in fact, walking on a hollow crust, and the small window was, as they afterward found, opposite a large crevasse on the other side of this ice-cavern, through which the light entered, flooding the whole vault and receiving from its icy walls its exquisite reflected color.* (* The effect is admirably described by M. Desor in his account of this excursion, “Sejours dans les Glaciers” page 367.)
Once across the fields of snow and neve, a fatiguing walk of five hours brought them to the chalets of Meril,* (* Sometimes Moril, but I have retained the spelling of M. Desor.–E.C.A.) where they expected to sleep. The night which should have prepared them for the fatigue of the next day was, however, disturbed by an untoward accident. The ladder left by Jacob Leuthold when 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 at last with the recovered treasure on his back. They had, in the mean while, lost two hours. They should have been on their road at three o’clock; it was now five. Jacob warned them therefore that they must make all speed, and that any one who felt himself unequal to a forced march should stay behind. No one responded to his suggestion, and they were presently on the road.
Passing Lake Meril, with its miniature icebergs, they reached the glacier of the Aletsch and its snow-fields, where the real difficulties and dangers of the ascent were to begin. In this great semicircular space, inclosed by the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the lesser peaks of this mountain group, lies the Aletsch reservoir of snow or neve. As this spot presented a natural pause between the laborious ascent already accomplished and the immense declivities which lay before them yet to be climbed, they named it Le Repos, and halted there for a short rest. Here they left also every needless incumbrance, taking only a little bread and wine, in case of exhaustion, some meteorological instruments, and the inevitable ladder, axe, and ropes of the Alpine climber. On their left, to the west of the amphitheatre, a vast passage opened between the Jungfrau and the Kranzberg, and in this could be distinguished a series of terraces, one above the other. The story is the usual one, of more or less steep slopes, where they sank in the softer snow or cut their steps in the icy surfaces; of open crevasses, crossed by the ladder, or the more dangerous ones, masked by snow, over which they trod cautiously, tied together by the rope. But there was nothing to appall the experienced mountaineer with firm foot and a steady head, until they reached a height where the summit of the Jungfrau detached itself in apparently inaccessible isolation from all beneath or around it. To all but the guides their farther advance seemed blocked by a chaos of precipices, either of snow and ice or of rock. Leuthold remained however quietly confident, telling them he clearly 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 fog lifted, and the summit of the Jungfrau, in its final solitude, rose before them. There was still a certain distance to be passed before they actually reached the base of the extreme peak. Here they paused, not without a certain hesitation, for though the summit lay but a few feet above them, they were separated from it by a sharp and seemingly inaccessible ridge. Even Agassiz, who was not easily discouraged, said, as he looked up at this highest point of the fortress they had scaled “We can never reach it.” For all answer, Jacob Leuthold, their intrepid guide, flinging down everything which could embarrass his movements, stretched his alpenstock over the ridge as a grappling pole, and, trampling the snow as he went, so as to flatten his giddy path for those who were to follow, was in a moment on the top. To so steep an apex does this famous peak narrow, that but one person can stand on the summit at a time, nor was even this possible till the snow was beaten down. Returning on his steps, Leuthold, whose quiet, unflinching audacity of success was contagious, assisted each one to stand for a few moments where he had stood. The fog, the effect of which they had so much feared, now lent something to the beauty of the view from this sublime foothold. Masses of vapor rolled up from the Roththal on the southwest, but, instead of advancing to envelop them, paused at a little distance arrested by some current from the plain. The temperature being below freezing point, the drops of moisture in this wall of vapor were congealed into ice-crystals, which glittered like gold in the sunlight and gave back all the colors of the rainbow.
When all the party were once more assembled at the base of the peak, Jacob, whose resources never failed, served to each one a little wine, and they rested on the snow before beginning their perilous descent. Of living things they saw only a hawk, poised in the air above their heads; of plants, a few lichens, where the surface of the rock was exposed. It was four 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 over. So elated were they by the success of the day, and so regardless of lesser perils after those they had passed through, that they were now inclined to hurry forward incautiously. Jacob, prudent when others were rash, as he was bold when others were intimidated, constantly called them to order with his: “Hubschle! nur immer hubschle!” (“Gently! always gently!”)
At six o’clock they were once more at Le Repos, having retraced their steps in two hours over a distance which had cost them six in going. Evening was now falling, but daylight was replaced by moonlight, and when they reached the glacier its whole surface shone with a soft silvery lustre, broken here and there by the gigantic shadow of some neighboring mountain thrown black across it. At about nine o’clock, just as they 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. The picture of the party, as they stood around him in the moonlight, dipping eagerly into his bucket, and drinking in turn until they had exhausted the supply, is so vivid, that one shares their good spirits and their enjoyment. Thus refreshed, they started on the last stage of their journey, three leagues of which yet lay before them, and at half-past eleven arrived at the chalets of Meril, which they had left at dawn.
On the morrow the party broke up, and Agassiz and Desor, accompanied by their friend, M. Escher de la Linth, returned to the Grimsel, and after a day’s rest there repaired once more to the Hotel des Neuchatelois. They remained on the glacier until the 5th of September, spending these few last days in completing their measurements, 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 exact language only in certain instances, the account of this and other Alpine ascensions described above has been based upon M. E. Desor’s “Sejours dans les Glaciers”. His very spirited narratives, added to my own recollections of what I had heard from Mr. Agassiz himself on the same subject, have given me my material.–E.C.A.)
CHAPTER 11.
1842-1843: AGE 35-36.
Zoological Work uninterrupted by Glacial Researches. Various Publications.
“Nomenclator Zoologicus.”
“Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae.” Correspondence with English Naturalists. Correspondence with Humboldt.
Glacial Campaign of 1842.
Correspondence with Prince de Canino concerning Journey to United States. Fossil Fishes from the Old Red Sandstone. Glacial Campaign of 1843.
Death of Leuthold, the Guide.
Although his glacier work was now so prominent a feature of Agassiz’s scientific life, his zoological studies, especially his ichthyological researches, and more especially his work on fossil fishes, went on with little interruption. His publications upon Fossil Mollusks,* (* “Etudes Critiques sur les Mollusques Fossiles” 4 numbers quarto with 100 plates.) upon Tertiary Shells,* (* “Iconographie des Coquilles Tertiaires reputees identiques sur les vivans” 1 number quarto 14 plates.) upon Living and Fossil Echinoderms,* (* “Monographie d’Echinodermes vivans et fossiles” 4 numbers quarto with 37 plates.) with many smaller monographs on special subjects, were undertaken and completed during the most active period of his glacial investigations. More surprising is it to find him, while pursuing new lines of investigation with passionate enthusiasm, engaged at the same time upon works seemingly so dry and tedious as his “Nomenclator Zoologicus,” and his “Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae.”
The former work, a large quarto volume with an Index,* (* The Index was also published separately as an octavo.) comprised an enumeration of all the genera of the animal kingdom, with the etymology of their names, the names of those who had first proposed them, and the date of their publication. He obtained the cooperation of other naturalists, submitting each class as far as possible for revision to the leaders in their respective departments.
In his letter of presentation to the library of the Neuchatel Academy, addressed to M. le Baron de Chambrier, President of the Academic Council, Agassiz thus describes the Nomenclator.
. . .”Have the kindness to accept for the library of the Academy the fifth number of a work upon the sources of zoological criticism, the publication of which I have just begun. It is a work of patience, demanding long and laborious researches. I had conceived the plan in the first years of my studies, and since then have never lost sight of it. I venture to believe it will be a barrier against the Babel of confusion which tends to overwhelm the domain of zoological synonymy. My book will be called ‘Nomenclator Zoologicus.'”. . .
The Bibliographia (4 volumes, octavo) was in some measure a complement of the Nomenclator, and contained a list of all the authors named in the latter, with notices of their works. It appeared somewhat later, and was published by the Ray Society in England, in 1848, after Agassiz had left Europe for the United States. The material for this work also had been growing upon his hands for years. Feeling more and more the importance of such a register as a guide for students, he appealed to naturalists in all parts of Europe for information upon the scientific bibliography of their respective countries, and at last succeeded in cataloguing, with such completeness as was possible, all known works and all scattered memoirs on zoology and geology. Unable to publish this costly but unremunerative material, he was delighted to give it up to the Ray Society. The first three volumes were edited with corrections and additions by Mr. H.E. Strickland, who died before the appearance of the fourth volume, which was finally completed under the care of his father-in-law, Sir William Jardine.
The ability, so eminently possessed by Agassiz of dealing with a number of subjects at once, was due to no superficial versatility. To him his work had but one meaning. It was never disconnected in his thought, and therefore he turned from his glaciers to his fossils, and from the fossil to the living world, with the feeling that he was always dealing with kindred problems, bound together by the same laws. Nowhere is this better seen than in the records of the scientific society of Neuchatel, the society he helped to found in the first months of his professorship, and to which he always remained strongly attached, being a constant attendant at its sessions from 1833 to 1846. Here we find him from month to month, with philosophic breadth of thought, treating of animals in their widest relations, or describing minute structural details with the skill of a specialist. He presents organized beings in their geological succession, in their geographical distribution, in their embryonic development. He reviews and remodels laws of classification. Sometimes he illustrates the fossil by the living world, sometimes he finds the key to present phenomena in the remote past. He reconstructs the history of the glacial period, and points to its final chapter in the nearest Alpine valleys, connecting these facts again with like phenomena in distant parts of the globe. But however wide his range and however various his topics, under his touch they are all akin, all coordinate parts of a whole which he strives to understand in its entirety. A few extracts from his correspondence will show him in his different lines of research at this time.
The following letter is from Edward Forbes, one of the earliest explorers of the deep-sea fauna. Agassiz had asked him for some help in his work upon echinoderms.
EDWARD FORBES TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.
21 LOTHIAN ST., EDINBURGH, February 13, 1841.
. . .A letter from you was to me one of the greatest of pleasures, and with great delight (though, I fear, imperfectly) I have executed the commission you gave me. It should have been done much sooner had not the storms been so bad in the sea near this that, until three days ago, I was not able to procure a living sea-urchin from which to make the drawings required. . .You have made all the geologists glacier-mad here, and they are turning Great Britain into an ice-house. Some amusing and very absurd attempts at opposition to your views have been made by one or two pseudo-geologists; among others, poor–, who has read a paper at the Royal Society here, maintaining that all the appearances you refer to glaciers were caused by blocks of ice which floated this way in the Deluge! and that the fossils of the pleistocene strata were mollusks, etc., which, climbing upon the ice-blocks, were carried to warmer seas against their will!! To my mind, one of the best proofs of the truth of your views lies in the decidedly arctic character of the pleistocene fauna, which must be referred to the glacier time, and by such reference is easily understood. I mean during the summer to collect data on that point, in order to present a mass of geological proofs of your theory.
Dr. Traill tells me you are proposing to visit England again during the coming summer. If you do, I hope we shall meet, when I shall have many things to show you, which time did not permit when you were here. I look anxiously for the forth-coming number of your history of the Echinodermata. . .
FROM SIR RODERICK MURCHISON.
June 13, 1842.
. . .Your letters have given me great pleasure: first, in assuring me that your zeal in ichthyology is undiminished, and that you are about to give such striking proofs of it to the British Association; and next that you still pursue with enthusiasm your admirable researches upon the glaciers. I should be charmed to put myself under your guidance for a walk on the glaciers of the Aar, but I hardly dare promise it yet. . .Even were I to make every haste, I doubt if it be possible to reach your Swiss meeting in time. It is just possible that I may find you in your glacial cantonment after your return, but even this will depend upon circumstances over which I have no control.
I send this letter to you by my friend, Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, who passes through Neuchatel on his way to Geneva. Accompanying it is a copy of my last discourse, which I request you to accept and to read all parts of it. You will see that I have grappled honestly and according to my own faith with your ice, but have never lost sight of your great merit. My concluding paragraph will convince you and all your friends that if I am wrong it is not from any preconceived notions, but only because I judge from what you will call incomplete evidence. Your “Venez voir!” still sounds in my ears. . .
Murchison remained for many years an opponent of the glacial theory in its larger application. In the discourse to which the above letter makes allusion (Address at the Anniversary Meeting of the Geological Society of London, 1842.* (* Extract from Report in volume 33 of the “Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal”.)) is this passage: “Once grant to Agassiz that his deepest valleys of Switzerland, such as the enormous Lake of Geneva, were formerly filled with snow and ice, and I see no stopping place. From that hypothesis you may proceed to fill the Baltic and the northern seas, cover southern England and half of Germany and Russia with similar icy sheets, on the surfaces of which all the northern boulders might have been shot off. So long as the greater number of the practical geologists of Europe are opposed to the wide extension of a terrestrial glacial theory, there can be little risk that such a doctrine should take too deep a hold of the mind. . . The existence of glaciers in Scotland and England (I mean in the Alpine sense) is not, at all events, established to the satisfaction of what I believe to be by far the greater number of British geologists.”
Twenty years later, with rare candor, Murchison wrote to Agassiz as follows; by its connection, though not by its date, the extract is in place here: “I send you my last anniversary address, which I wrote entirely myself; and I beg you to believe that in the part of it that refers to the glacial period, and to Europe as it was geographically, I have had the sincerest pleasure in avowing that I was wrong in opposing as I did your grand and original idea of my native mountains. Yes! I am now convinced that glaciers did descend from the mountains to the plains as they do now in Greenland.”
During the summer of 1842, at about the same date with Murchison’s letter disclaiming the glacial theory, Agassiz received, on the other hand, a new evidence, and one which must have given him especial pleasure, of the favorable impression his views were making in some quarters in England.
FROM DR. BUCKLAND.
OXFORD, July 22, 1842.
You will, I am sure, rejoice with me at the adhesion of C. Darwin to the doctrine of ancient glaciers in North Wales, of which I send you a copy, and which was communicated to me by Dr. Tritten, during the late meeting at Manchester, in time to be quoted by me versus Murchison, when he was proclaiming the exclusive agency of floating icebergs in drifting erratic blocks and making scratched and polished surfaces. It has raised the glacial theory fifty per cent, as far as relates to glaciers descending inclined valleys; but Hopkins and the Cantabrigians are still as obstinate as ever against allowing the power of expansion to move ice along great distances on horizontal surfaces. . .
The following is the letter referred to above.
C. DARWIN TO DR. TRITTEN.
Yesterday (and the previous days) I had some most interesting work in examining the marks left by EXTINCT glaciers. I assure you, an extinct volcano could hardly leave more evident traces of its activity and vast powers. I found one with the lateral moraine quite perfect, which Dr. Buckland did not see. Pray if you have any communication with Dr. Buckland give him my warmest thanks for having guided me, through the published abstract of his memoir, to scenes, and made me understand them, which have given me more delight than I almost remember to have experienced since I first saw an extinct crater. The valley about here and the site of the inn at which I am now writing must once have been covered by at least 800 or 1,000 feet in thickness of solid ice! Eleven years ago I spent a whole day in the valley where yesterday everything but the ice of the glaciers was palpably clear to me, and I then saw nothing but plain water and bare rock. These glaciers have been grand agencies. I am the more pleased with what I have seen in North Wales, as it convinces me that my view of the distribution of the boulders on the South American plains, as effected by floating ice, is correct. I am also more convinced that the valleys of Glen Roy and the neighboring parts of Scotland have been occupied by arms of the sea, and very likely (for in that point I cannot, of course, doubt Agassiz and Buckland) by glaciers also.
It continued to be a grief to Agassiz that Humboldt, the oldest of all his scientific friends, and the one whose opinion he most reverenced, still remained incredulous. Humboldt’s letters show that Agassiz did not willingly renounce the hope of making him a convert. Agassiz’s own letters to Humboldt are missing from this time onward. Overwhelmed with occupation, and more at his ease in his relations with the older scientific men, he had ceased to make the rough drafts in which his earlier correspondence is recorded.
HUMBOLDT TO AGASSIZ.
BERLIN, March 2, 1842.
. . .When one has been so long separated, even accidentally, from a friend as I have been from you, my dear Agassiz, it is difficult to find beginning or end to a letter. The kindly remembrance which you send me is evidence that my long silence has not seemed strange to you. . .It would be wasting words to tell you how I have been prevented, by the distractions of my life, always increasing with old age, from acknowledging the admirable things received from you, –upon living and fossil fishes, echinoderms, and glaciers. My admiration of your boundless activity, of your beautiful intellectual life, increases with every year. This admiration for your work and your bold excursions is based upon the most careful reading of all the views and investigations, for which I have to thank you. This very week I have read with great satisfaction your truly philosophical address, and your long treatise in Cotta’s fourth “Jahresschrift.” Even L. von Buch confessed that the first half of your treatise, the living presentation of the succession of organized beings, was full of truth, sagacity, and novelty.
I in no way reproach you, my dear friend, for the urgent desire expressed in all your letters, that your oldest friends should accept your comprehensive geological view of your ice-period. It is very noble and natural to wish that what has impressed us as true should also be recognized by those we love. . .I believe I have read and compared all that has been written for and against the ice-period, and also upon the transportation of boulders, whether pushed along or carried by floods or gliding over slopes. My own opinion, as you know, can have no weight or authority, since I have not myself seen the most decisive points. Indeed I am, perhaps wrongly, inclined to look upon all geological theories as having their being in a mythical region, in which, with the progress of physics, the phantasms are modified century by century. But the “elephants caught in the ice,” and Cuvier’s “instantaneous change of climate,” seem to me no more intelligible today than when I wrote my Asiatic fragments. According to all that we know of the decrease of heat in the earth, I cannot understand such a change of temperature in a space of time which does not also allow for the decaying of flesh. I understand much better how wolves, hares, and dogs, should they fall to-day into clefts of the frozen regions of Northern Siberia (and the so-called “elephant-ice” is in plain prose only porphyritic drift mixed with ice-crystals, true drift material), might retain their flesh and muscles. . .But I am only a grumbling rebellious subject in your kingdom. . .Do not be vexed with a friend who is more than ever impressed with your services to geology, your philosophical views of nature, your profound knowledge of organized beings. . .
With old attachment and the warmest friendship, your
A. DE HUMBOLDT.
In the same strain is this extract from another letter of Humboldt’s, written two or three months later.
. . .”‘Grace from on high,’ says Madame de Sevigne, ‘comes slowly.’ I especially desire it for the glacial period and for that fatal cap of ice which frightens me, child of the equator that I am. My heresy, of little importance, since I have seen nothing, does not, I assure you, my dear Agassiz, diminish my ardent desire that all your observations should be published. . .I rejoice in the good news you give me of the fishes. I should pain you did I add that this work of yours, by the light it has shed on the organic development of animals, makes the true foundation of your glory.”. . .
LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.
NEUCHATEL, June, 1842.
. . .I am hard at work on the fishes of the “Old Red,” and will send you at Manchester a part at least of the plates, with a general summary of the species of that formation. I aim to finish the work with such care that it shall mark a sensible advance in ichthyology. I hope it will satisfy you. . .You ask me how I intend to finish my Fossil Fishes? As follows: As soon as the number on the species of the “Old Red” is finished, I shall complete the general outline of the work as I did with volume 4, in order that the arrangement and character of all the families in the four orders may be studied in their zoological affinities, with their genera and principal species. But as this outline can no longer contain the innumerable species now known to me, I take up monographically the species from the different geological formations in the order of the deposits, and publish as many supplements as there are great formations rich in fossil fishes. I shall limit myself to the species described in the body of the work, merely adding the description of the new species in each deposit, and such additions as I may have to make for those already known. In this way, those who wish to study fossil fishes from the zoological stand-point can turn to the work in the original form, while those who wish to study them in their geological relations can confine themselves to the supplements. By means of double registers at the end of each volume, these two distinct parts of the work will be again united as a complete whole. This is the only plan I have been able to devise by which I could publish in succession all my materials without burdening my first subscribers, who will thus be free to accept the supplements or not, as they prefer. Should you have occasion to mention this arrangement to the friends of fossil ichthyology, pray do so; it seems to me for the interest of the matter that it should be known. . .I propose to resume with new zeal my researches upon the fossil fishes as soon as I return from an excursion I wish to make in July and August to the glacier of the Aar, where I hope, by a last visit this year, to conclude my labors on this subject. You will be glad to learn that the beautiful barometer you gave me has been my faithful companion in the Alps. . .I have the pleasure to tell you that the King of Prussia has made me a handsome gift of nearly 200 pounds for the continuance of my glacial work. I feel, therefore, the greater certainty of completing what remains for me to do. . .
The campaign of 1842 opened on the 4th of July. The boulder had ceased to be a safe shelter, and was replaced by a rough frame cabin covered with canvas. If the party had some regrets in leaving their picturesque hut beneath the rock, the greater comfort of the new abode consoled them. It had several divisions. A sleeping-place for the guides and workmen was partitioned off from a middle room occupied by Agassiz and his friends, while the front space served as dining-room, sitting-room, and laboratory. This outer apartment boasted a table and one or two benches; even a couple of chairs were kept as seats of honor for occasional guests. A shelf against the wall and a few pegs accommodated books, instruments, coats, etc., and a plank floor, on which to spread their blankets at night, was a good exchange for the frozen surface of the glacier.* (* In bidding farewell to the boulder which had been the first “Hotel des Neuchatelois” we may add a word of its farther fortunes. It had begun to split in 1841, and was completely rent asunder in 1844, after which frost and rain completed its dismemberment. Strange to say, during the last summer (1884) certain fragments of the mass have been found, inscribed with the names of some of the party; one of the blocks bearing beside names, the mark “Number 2”. The account says “The middle stone, the one numbered 2, was at the intersecting point of two lines drawn from the Pavilion Dollfuss to the Scheuchzerhorn on the one part, and from the Rothhorn to the Thierberg on the other.” According to the measurements taken by Agassiz, the Hotel des Neuchatelois in 1840 stood at 797 metres from the promontory of Abschwung. We are thus enabled, by referring to the large glacier map of Wild and Stengel, to compare the present with the then position of the stone, and thereby ascertain the progress of the glacier since the time in question. Thus the boulder still contributes something toward the sequel of the work begun by those who once found shelter beneath it.–E.C.A.)
Mr. Wild, an engineer of known ability, was now a member of their party, as a topographical survey was to be one of the chief objects of the summer’s work. The results of this survey, which was continued during two summers, are embodied in the map accompanying Agassiz’s “Systeme Glaciaire.” Experiments upon the extent and connection of the net-work of capillary fissures that admitted water into the interior of the glaciers, occupied Agassiz’s own attention during a great part of the summer. In order to ascertain this, colored liquids were introduced into the glacier by means of boring, and it was found that they threaded their way through the mass of the ice and reappeared at lower points with astonishing rapidity. A gallery was cut at a depth of ten metres below the surface, through a wall of ice intervening between two crevasses. The colored liquid poured into a hole above soon appeared on the ceiling of the gallery. The experimenters were surprised to find that at night the same result was obtained, and that the liquid penetrated from the surface to the roof of the gallery even more quickly than during the day. This was explained by the fact that the fissures were then free from any moisture arising from surface melting, so that the passage through them was unimpeded.* (* Distrust has been thrown upon these results by the failure of more recent attempts to repeat the same experiments. In reference to this, Agassiz himself says “The infiltration has been denied in consequence of the failure of some experiments in which an attempt was made to introduce colored fluids into the glacier. To this I can only answer that I succeeded completely myself in the self-same experiment which a later investigator found impracticable, and that I see no reason why the failure of the latter attempt should cast a doubt upon the success of the former. The explanation of the difference in the result may perhaps be found in the fact that as a sponge gorged with water can admit no more fluid than it already contains, so the glacier, under certain circumstances, and especially at noonday in summer, may be so soaked with water that all attempts to pour colored fluids into it would necessarily fail.”–See “Geological Sketches” by L. Agassiz, page 236.)
The comparative rate of advance in the different parts of the glacier was ascertained this summer with greater precision than before. The rows of stakes planted in a straight line across the glacier by Agassiz and Escher de la Linth, in the previous September, now described a crescent with the curve turned toward the terminus of the glacier, showing, contrary to the expectation of Agassiz, that the centre moved faster than the sides. The correspondence of the curve in the stratification with that of the line of stakes confirmed this result. The study of the stratification of the snow was a marked feature of the season’s work, and Agassiz believed, as will be seen by a later letter, that he had established this fact of glacial structure beyond a doubt.
The origin and mode of formation of the crevasses also especially occupied the observers. On the 7th of August, Agassiz had an opportunity of watching this phenomenon in its initiation. Attracted to a certain spot on the glacier by a commotion among his workmen, he found them alarmed at the singular noises and movements in the ice. “I heard,” he says, “at a little distance a sound like the simultaneous discharge of fire-arms; hurrying in the direction of the noise, it was repeated under my feet with a movement like that of a slight earthquake; the ground seemed to shift and give way under me, but now the sound differed from the preceding, and resembled a crumbling of rocks, without, however, any perceptible sinking of the surface. The glacier actually trembled, nevertheless; for a block of granite three feet in diameter, perched on a pedestal two feet high, suddenly fell down. At the same instant a crack opened between my feet and ran rapidly across the glacier in a straight line.”* (* Extract from a letter of Louis Agassiz to M. Arago dated from the Hotel des Neuchatelois, Glacier of the Aar, August 7, 1842.) On this occasion Agassiz saw three crevasses formed in an hour and a half, and heard others opening at a greater distance from him. He counted eight new fissures in a space of one hundred and twenty-five feet. The phenomenon continued throughout the evening, and recurred, though with less frequency, during the night. The cracks were narrow, the largest an inch and a half in width, and their great depth was proved by the rapidity with which they drained any standing water in their immediate vicinity. “A boring-hole,” says Agassiz, “one hundred and thirty feet deep and six inches in diameter, full of water, was completely emptied in a few minutes, showing that these narrow cracks penetrated to great depths.”
The summer’s work included observations also on the comparative movement of the glacier during the day and night, on the surface waste of the mass, its reparation, on the neve and snow of the upper regions, on the meridian holes, the sun-dials of the glaciers, as they have been called.* (* “Here and there on the glacier there are patches of loose material, dust, sand, or gravel, accumulated by diminutive water-rills and small enough to become heated during the day. They will, of course, be warmed first on their eastern side, then still more powerfully on their southern side, and, in the afternoon, with less force again, on their western side, while the northern side will remain comparatively cool. Thus around more than half of their circumference they melt the ice in a semicircle, and the glacier is covered with little crescent-shaped troughs of this description, with a steep wall on one side and a shallow one on the other, and a little heap of loose materials in the bottom. They are the sun-dials of the glacier, recording the hour by the advance of the sun’s rays upon them.”–” Geological Sketches” by L. Agassiz page 293.) On the whole, the most important result of the campaign was the topographical survey of the glacier, recorded in the map published in Agassiz’s second work on the glacier.
At about this time there begin to be occasional references in his correspondence to a journey of exploration in the United States. Especially was this plan in frequent discussion between him and Charles Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, a naturalist almost as ardent as himself, with whom he had long been in intimate scientific correspondence. In April, 1842, the prince writes him: “I indulge myself in dreaming of the journey to America in which you have promised to accompany me. What a relaxation! and at the same time what an amount of useful work!” Again, a few months later, “You must keep me well advised of your plans, and I, in my turn, will try so to arrange my affairs as to find myself free in the spring of 1844 for a voyage, the chief object of which will be to show my oldest son the country where he was born, and where man may develop free of shackles. The mere anticipation of this journey is delightful to me, since I shall have you at my side, and may thus feel sure that it will make an epoch in science.” This letter is answered from the glacier; the first part refers to the Nomenclator, in regard to which he often consulted the prince.
LOUIS AGASSIZ TO THE PRINCE OF CANINO.
GLACIER OF THE AAR, September 1, 1842.
. . .I thank you most sincerely for the pains you have so kindly taken with my proof, and for pointing out the faults and omissions you have noticed in my register of birds. I made the corrections at once, and have taken the liberty of mentioning on the cover of this number the share you have consented to take in my Nomenclator. I shall try to do better and better in the successive classes, but you well know the impossibility of avoiding grave errors in such a work, and that they can be wholly weeded out only in a second and third edition. I should have written sooner in answer to your last, had not your letter reached me on the Glacier of the Aar, where I have been since the beginning of July, following up observations, the results of which become every day more important and more convincing. The most striking fact, one which I think I have placed beyond the reach of doubt, is the primitive stratification of the neve, or fields of snow,–stratified from the higher regions across the whole course of the glacier to its lower extremity. I have prepared a general map, with transverse sections, showing how the layers lift themselves on the borders of the glacier and also at their junction, where two glaciers meet at the outlet of adjoining valleys; and how, also, the waving lines formed by the layers on the surface change to sharper concentric curves with a marked axis, as the glacier descends to lower levels. For a full demonstration of the matter, I ought to send you my map and plans, of which I have, as yet, no duplicates; but the fact is incontestable, and you will oblige me by announcing it in the geological section at Padua. M. Charpentier, who is going to your meeting, will contest it, but you can tell him from me that it is as evident as the stratification of the Neptunic rocks. To see and understand it fully, however, one must stand well above the glacier, so as to command the surface as a whole in one view. I would add that I am not now alluding to the blue and white bands in the ice of which I spoke to you last year; this is a quite distinct phenomenon.
I wish I could accept your kind invitation, but until I have gone to the bottom of the glacier question and terminated my “Fossil Fishes,” I do not venture to move. It is no light task to finish all this before our long journey, to which I look forward, as it draws nearer, with a constantly increasing interest. I am very sorry not to join you at Florence. It would have been a great pleasure for me to visit the collections of northern Italy in your company. . .I write you on a snowy day, which keeps me a prisoner in my tent; it is so cold that I can hardly hold my pen, and the water froze at my bedside last night. The greatest privation is, however, the lack of fruit and vegetables. Hardly a potato once a fortnight, but always and every day, morning and night, mutton, everlasting mutton, and rice soup. As early as the end of July we were caught for three days by the snow; I fear I shall be forced to break up our encampment next week without having finished my work. What a contrast between this life and that of the plain! I am afraid my letter may be long on the road before reaching the mail, and I pause here that I may not miss the chance of forwarding it by a man who has just arrived with provisions and is about to return to the hospice of the Grimsel, where some trustworthy guide will undertake to deliver it at the first post-office.
No sooner is Agassiz returned from the glacier than we meet him again in the domain of his fossil fishes.
LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.
NEUCHATEL, December 15, 1842.
. . .In the last few months I have made an important step in the identification of fossil fishes. The happy idea occurred to me of applying the microscope to the study of fragments of their bones, especially those of the head, and I have found in their structure modifications as remarkable and as numerous as those which Mr. Owen discovered in the structure of teeth. Here there is a vast new field to explore. I have already applied it to the identification of the fossil fishes in the Old Red of Russia sent me for that purpose by Mr. Murchison. You will find more ample details about it in my report to him. I congratulate myself doubly on the results; first, because of their great importance in paleontology, and also because they will draw more closely my relations with Mr. Owen, whom I always rejoice to meet on the same path with myself, and whom I believe incapable of jealousy in such matters. . .The only point indeed, on which I think I may have a little friendly difference with him, is concerning the genus Labyrinthodon, which I am firmly resolved, on proofs that seem to me conclusive, to claim for the class of fishes.* (* On seeing Owen’s evidence some years later, Agassiz at once acknowledged himself mistaken on this point. ) As soon as I have time I will write to Mr. Owen, but this need not prevent you from speaking to him on the subject if you have an early opportunity to do so. I am now exclusively occupied with the fossil fishes, which at any cost I wish to finish this winter. . . Before even returning to my glacier work, I will finish my monograph of the Old Red, so that you may present it at the Cork meeting, which it will be impossible for me to attend. . .I am infinitely grateful to you and Lord Enniskillen for your willingness to trust your Sheppy fishes to me; I shall thus be prepared in advance for a strict determination of these fossils. Having them for some time before my eyes, I shall become familiar with all the details. When I know them thoroughly, and have compared them with the collections of skeletons in the Museums of Paris, of Leyden, of Berlin, and of Halle, I will then come to England to see what there may be in other collections which I cannot have at my disposal here.
The winter of 1843, apart from his duties as professor, was devoted to the completion of the various zoological works on which he was engaged, and to the revision of materials he had brought back from the glacier. His habits with reference to physical exercise were very irregular. He passed at once from the life of the mountaineer to that of the closet student. After weeks spent on the snow and ice of the glacier, constantly on foot and in the open air, he would shut himself up for a still longer time in his laboratory, motionless for hours at his microscope by day, and writing far into the night, rarely leaving his work till long after midnight. He was also forced at this time to press forward his publications in the hope that he might have some return for the sums he had expended upon them. This was indeed a very anxious period of his life. He could never be brought to believe that purely intellectual aims were not also financially sound, and his lithographic establishment, his glacier work, and his costly researches in zoology had proved far beyond his means. The prophecies of his old friend Humboldt were coming true. He was entangled in obligations, and crushed under the weight of his own undertakings. He began to doubt the possibility of carrying out his plan of a scientific journey to the United States.
AGASSIZ TO THE PRINCE OF CANINO.
NEUCHATEL, April, 1843.
. . .I have worked like a slave all winter to finish my fossil fishes; you will presently receive my fifteenth and sixteenth numbers, forwarded two days since, with more than forty pages of text, containing many new observations. I shall allow myself no interruption until this work is finished, hoping thereby to obtain a little freedom, for if my position here is not changed I shall be forced to seek the means of existence elsewhere. Meantime, extravagant projects present themselves, as is apt to be the case when one is in difficulties. That of accompanying you to the United States was so tempting, that I am bitterly disappointed to think that its execution becomes impossible in my present circumstances. All my projects for further publications must also be adjourned, or perhaps renounced. . .Possibly, when my work on the fossil fishes is completed, the sale of some additional copies may help me to rise again. And yet I have not much hope of this, since all the attempts of my friends to obtain subscriptions for me in France and Russia have failed: because the French government takes no interest in what is done out of Paris; and in Russia such researches, having little direct utility, are looked upon with indifference. Do you think any position would be open to me in the United States, where I might earn enough to enable me to continue the publication of my unhappy books; which never pay their way because they do not meet the wants of the world?. . .
In the following July we find him again upon the glacier. But the campaign of 1843 opened sadly for the glacial party. Arriving at Meiringen they heard that Jacob Leuthold was ill and would probably be unable to accompany them. They went to his house, and found him, indeed, the ghost of his former self, apparently in a rapid decline. Nevertheless, he welcomed them gladly to his humble home, and would have kept them for some refreshment. Fearing to fatigue him, however, they stayed but a few moments. As they left, one of the party pointed to the mountains, adding a hope that he might soon join them. His eyes filled with tears; it was his only answer, and he died three days later. He was but thirty-seven years of age, and at that time the most intrepid and the most intelligent of the Oberland guides. His death was felt as a personal grief by the band of workers whose steps he had for years guided over the most difficult Alpine passes.
The summer’s work continued and completed that of the last season. On leaving the glacier the year before they had marked a network of loose boulders, such as travel with the ice, and also a number of fixed points in the valley walls, comparing and registering their distance from each other. They had also sunk a line of stakes across the glacier. The change in the relative position of the two sets of signals and the curve in their line of stakes gave them, self-recorded, as it were, the rate of advance of the glacier as a whole, and also the comparative rate of progression in its different parts. Great pains was also taken during the summer to measure the advance in every twenty-four hours, as well as to compare the diurnal with the nocturnal movement, and to ascertain the amount of surface waste. The season was an unfavorable one, beginning so late and continuing so cold that the period of work was shortened.
CHAPTER 12.
1843-1846: AGE 36-39.
Completion of Fossil Fishes.
Followed by Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone. Review of the Later Work.
Identification of Fishes by the Skull. Renewed Correspondence with Prince Canino about Journey