THE ANCIENT KANDER GLACIER 195
and left arm. At an earlier stage, however, this hill was
completely drowned in ice.
As our traveller advances past this point he finds before
him a glacier-filled valley, shaped Uke a funnel, widest near
what will be in ages to come the town of Thun, and narrowing
from this point towards the plain. As he advances to the
south-east, he notes that the main glacier bends away at an
angle, taking a nearly eastward direction. On his right
there enters a small tributary glacier, occupying the future
Simmental, and a much larger one, which runs parallel with
the main Aare glacier for a time before uniting with it, and
joins the latter at almost even grade. This is the Kander
glacier, fed by the Bliimhsalp and Wildstrubel groups, and
occupying the important valley which in our later days
contains the Lotschberg railway.
Let us suppose that our reindeer hunter, with some per-
ception of its future importance, elects to foUow this tributary
glacier, and so traverse a valley which thousands of years
afterwards will carry many joyful winter sportsmen to the
village of Adelboden.
As our traveller, however, has no thought of future triumphs
on sledge or ski to distract his mind, we may credit him with
a little more thoughtfulness than some present-day tourists,
and beUeve that he often turns as he ascends, to gaze at the
great glacier behind him. If he does so he will be struck by
the immense mass of ice piled up in that part of the valley
where future tourists will find the lakes of Thun and Brienz,
a mass due to the fact that practically all the Oberland is
sending its quota of ice into that narrow valley. Doubtless
it will occur to him that that great mass of ice, thickened by
the junction of so many tributary streams, must be having
a great effect upon the valley floor. He wdll notice also as
he rises the huge wall of moraine which separates for a time
the Kander glacier from the main one.
Without stopping to discuss the further sights of the
196 THEN AND NOW IN THE ALPS
Kander valley, we may follow our guide up to the future
site of Kandersteg, now buried deep beneath the ice, and
watch him as, keeping a southerly direction, he avoids the
upper extremity of the main valley, and climbs wearily up
the steep ice-slope which conceals what we know as the road
to the Gemmi Pass. His long climb brings him to near the
head of the Lammern glacier, and here, Uke many travellers
since, he stands to take in the marvellous view of the Pennine
Alps, as seen across the great Rhone valley, now filled with
an enormous ice-river. But while tourists to-day must
thereafter descend the multitudinous curves of the steep
Gemmi path, our traveller finds that an arm of the Lammern
glacier has crossed what should have been the watershed,
and flows steeply down to join the great Rhone glacier far
below.
Here, therefore, on the summit, we have ice flowing two
ways : northwards to melt ultimately in order to supply
water to the Rhine, or southwards to join the Rhone glacier.
Let us suppose that our hunter, wearied of his upward plod-
ding, elects to ghssade down that wayward arm of the
Lammern glacier, and thus find his way to the Rhone valley.
Let him now follow this great glacier downwards, where will
he find himself ultimately 1 Below Martigny the great
glacier swings round, changing from a south-west to a north-
west direction, and as he approaches the region where Mon-
treux will come to be placed, the tendency will be for him to
be carried onwards in the same north-westerly direction
with one great arm of the glacier, which sweeps on till its
path is blocked by the Jura, and it is forced to swing round
to the north-east, where it forms that great glacier with
which we started.
If he avoid this arm, the other, the south-west arm, will
carry him past where Geneva will later arise and so into the
rift of the Lower Rhone valley. If both arms claim his
attention successively, he will arrive finally at the conception
THE ICE AGE AND THE PRESENT 197
of the end of the Rhone glacier as a hammer-like structure,
the handle of the hammer lying up the valley to end at
Martigny, and the two parts of the head lying, the one
against the Jura till, as we have seen, it melts away near
Olten, and the other, also jammed against the Jura, extend-
ing past Geneva and so beyond our ken. The whole of the
site of Lake Geneva, he will thus perceive, Ues within the ice,
and the angle between the two parts of the lake indicates
the region where the two arms of the glacier diverged.
Now let us repeat this long journey to-day as an example
of a simple Swiss tour. We arrive from the north at Basel,
and decide to travel to the Valais via the Gemmi Pass. The
railway takes us through the Jura to Olten on the Aare,
and from Olten along the eastern slopes of the Swiss plain
to Berne, likewise on the Aare. If we have taken the shortest
route, the Aare obviously either does not share EucUd's
views on the question of what constitutes the shortest distance
between two points, or has abandoned all thought of this.
Has our reindeer hunter any Ught to cast upon this pre-
Uminary problem ?
His experiences at any rate serve to draw our attention
to the fact that the Aare so far as Berne, Uke the streams of
the Alpine foreland to the north-east of this river, flows
generally in a north-westerly direction, that is, down the
slope of the ground. On the other hand, the rivers lying
to the south-west of Berne flow in directions from north to
north-east, because they are, as it were, dragged into the
hollow left by the great arm of the Rhone glacier. This
glacier, we saw, was thickest near the Jura. There it has left
a. specially deep furrow, parts of which are occupied by lakes
Neuchatel and Bienne, while the narrowed north-eastern end
carries the Aare from Bienne to Brugg, the river here being
like the Danube to the north of the Eastern Alps, a collecting
river, gathering up the Alpine streams. The Aare has been
198 THEN AND NOW IN THE ALPS
artificially diverted to Lake Bienne, but apart from this
diversion it is obvious that there is a curiously circuitous
tract between the two parts of its course, that is, between
its north-westerly course to Berne, and its north-easterly
one beyond the diversion. The reason is that its preglacial
course north-westward over the plain was blocked by moraines
left by the great glaciers, and after the passing away of the
ice it had to dig out for itself a new channel. Beyond this
moraine-blocked region it reached the great funnel-shaped
valley left by the arm of the Rhone glacier and was drawn
into this.
From Berne we next follow the Aare valley up to Thun,
but if time permit it is well to make a detour to chmb the
Belpberg, at once a fine viewpoint and a region of great
interest.
The view we need not take time to describe ; the interest
lies in the fact that, as already stated, at one period the
Aare glacier spUt in two parts to the south-east of this hill,
which thus formed an ' island ' in the midst of the ice. But
it will be noted that above the mountain the valley is wider
than it is at this point, and further that the map suggests
that there was once a belt of rock across the valley at this
narrowed region. In other words, the mountain of the
Belpberg is all that remains of a rocky bar which once stretched
across the Aare valley, the sides of the bar having been worn
away. The fine castle-crowned rock which stands up at Arco
near the head of Lake Garda is another example of the same
phenomenon, and we have in the Alps all stages in the dis-
section of such rocky bars (Plate XVIII. ).
From Thun we may take railway or steamboat to Spiez on
the beautiful lake, and we note that the lake occupies a part
of the region where the ice lay thickest. If partially dammed
by moraines at its lower end, it is apparently also in part due
to the fact that the ice with its load of stones and sub-glacial
streams wore away a hollow in the floor of the valley. The
OVERDEEPENED VALLEYS AND ROCKY BARS 190
Kander river now debouches into the lake at Spiez, but this
is due to human interference ; in earlier days it ran along
the side of the lake and joined the Aare below its exit, as the
Arve joins the Rhone below Lake Geneva. We note that the
Kander valley slopes down gradually to lake level, while the
Simmental is separated from the main valley by a steep slope,
a ' step,' through which the river has cut a defile. This is
beUeved to be due to the fact that the Kander glacier, owing
to its size, lowered its valley floor to approximately the same
extent as did the main glacier, while the small Simmen
glacier, partly owing to the way in which it was dammed
back by the main glacier, wore away its valley floor but
little, so that the main valley is * overdeepened ' as compared
with the ' hanging ' side valley. Though only sUghtly
marked here, the phenomenon is very striking in many other
parts of Switzerland.
One other point is very noticeable. At what is now the
upper end of the lake of Thun the Lutschine glacier joined
the Aare glacier, the two being of approximately equivalent
size. There must have been tremendous ice-pressure where
the two streams joined, and we note that the lake occurs just
below the junction. A Httle lower, as we have seen, the great
Kander glacier also brought its load of ice into the crowded
valley. There is not always a lake in such a position as
this, for lakes are short-Uved structures always tending to
become silted up. But we cannot too soon appreciate the
fact that basins in Alpine valleys, whether they contain
water or not, generally occur near points where once there
was a junction of glaciers. Further, below the basin there
is often a bar (German Riegel), as if, after the tremendous
struggle and consequent increased rapidity of movement
and of erosion which occurred when two or more large glaciers
had to acconmiodate themselves to a single valley, there
ensued a quieter stretch where erosion was at a minimum.
Before we leave the valley of the Aare it is difficult to avoid
200 THEN AND NOW IN THE ALPS
a glance at another interesting phenomenon which occurs
higher up. We find that always when the valley down
which an Ice Age glacier was travelling took a sudden
curve, it was difficult for the glacier to accommodate itself
to the change of direction, and it showed a tendency to
continue its original direction. Thus below Meiringen the
Aare glacier found it difficult to bend round to occupy the
valley in which Lake Brienz now lies, and in the struggle,
as it were, it contrived to send an arm over the valley wall,
an arm which smoothed out the region we now call the
Briinig pass. We could travel from Thun by lakes Thun
and Brienz and then via the Briinig to Lucerne, and then,
though we had never touched the Alps proper, we should
yet have seen much of the action of past ice. Incidentally
we may notice that the great north-east arm of the Hhone
glacier, which we have described so fully, is another example
of the tendency of the Ice Age glaciers to continue moving
in the same straight line, even though the valleys in which
they lay curved.
We shall not discuss the valley of the Kander in detail,
though it ofiers much of interest ; probably most tourists
will traverse it by train up to Kandersteg. This village Ues
in an interesting example of a basin due to the union of
glaciers, though the basin has been cut in two by a landshp
not far below the village. The path to the Gemmi, again,
is a beautiful example of a hanging side valley, for the glacier
which once traversed it was insignificant compared to those
which streamed down from the BliimKsalp group. The
Gemmi pass, with the beautiful little Daubensee, we have
already explained as due to the bifurcation of the Lammern
glacier, and we must not forget to notice the wonderful
portal, whose door-posts are the Daubenhorn and the Platten-
horn, between which the intrusive ice-tongue found its way
by the Dala valley to the Rhone valley. The Dala valley
was overdeepened by its own glacier, a far more important ice-
GLACIATED VALLEYS 201
stream than that tributary which diverged from the Lammern.
Thus the Gemmi pass hangs high above the basin in which
the Baths of Leuk he, and the route from the one to the other
lies down the precipitous Gemmiwand, that wonderful cliff
over which the swift lightning plays in the sudden summer
thunderstorms.
But as the arm of the Lammern was to the Dala glacier,
so was the latter to the Rhone glacier, and therefore just
as the Gemmi pass hangs high above the Dala valley, so
in its turn does the Dala hang high above the Rhone
valley.
The Fates are kinder to us than to the men of the Old Stone
Age in that locomotion is much easier. When we reach the
Rhone valley at Leuk, therefore, let us turn, not down the
valley to the lake, but up toward its head.
The shape of the main valley is very striking. Whereas
river valleys in general have walls which converge towards
the bottom, that is, are V-shaped, this valley is broad at the
base, or U-shaped, a phenomenon common in glaciated valleys,
and ascribed to the action of the ice. Further, the walls are
very steep, and over these steep walls the ' hanging ' lateral
streams tumble in waterfalls, ofttimes used for the generation
of electricity. To this rule there are only two notable
exceptions. The Visp and the Dranse both enter the Rhone
valley by comparatively gentle slopes, such as those which
occur when tributaries in non-glaciated regions join a main
stream. The reason is the same as that already given for
the Aare valley. That is, both the Visp valley and the
Dranse valley in glacial times contained very large glaciers,
which had, apparently, a marked deepening effect ; there is
therefore not that want of concordance between main and
side valley which occurs where their respective glaciers were
of very unequal dimensions.
One other feature of the Rhone valley may be noted, though
we shall consider it further in a moment in the case of the Visp
202 THEN AND NOW IN THE ALPS
valley. This is that above the steep wall which rises from
the present valley floor there lies a region of much gentler slope,
which forms, as it were, a terrace on the mountain side. This
terrace is a common feature in the Alps, being admirably
seen, for example, in the Lauterbrunnen valley, and on it
health resorts are often placed. It is beheved to represent
the preglacial valley floor, and on this hypothesis the distance
between its edge and the present stream level represents the
' overdeepening ' due to ice.
Let us now suppose that we have reached Visp, where we
may turn up the valley of the same name, noting as we pass
Stalden the entrance of the Saas valley, which once carried
a glacier roughly equivalent to the Visp glacier, so that the
two valleys now join approximately at grade. As we travel
up the valley also, we notice the usual alternation of basin
and gorge, the basins, however, being here small, for no
noticeable tributaries joined the great glacier till we reach
the relatively wide trough at the valley head, in which
Zermatt hes. A very obvious feature, on the other hand,
as we ascend, is the presence of a sloping shelf high above
the present valley wall, a shelf on which, in the lower section
of the valley, an almost continuous row of hamlets stands,
among which Torbet and Emd are conspicuous. The valley
owes its relatively high population to the possibiUty of
utihsing those sloping terraces for pasture or cultivation.
The basin in which Zermatt hes must obviously be corre-
lated with the numerous surrounding glaciers, now sadly
shrunken, which once united to form the great Visp
glacier.
Let us suppose that we arrive at the village of Zermatt
in clear weather. One of the first disappointments will
certainly be that, of all the mountains which we know sur-
round it, only the Matterhorn can be clearly seen. The others
stand back from the valley, rising above a sloping terrace to
reach which we have to surmount the steep containing wall of
GLACIATION IN THE VALAIS 203
the basin. This means a climb of not less than 1500 feet in
whatever direction we choose. Now all visitors to Zermatt
want to see the mountains, but not all want to cUmb 1500 feet
every day — or any day — to see them, and the prudent Swiss has
taken cognisance of the fact. One part of the sloping shelf,
that which has the double advantage of facing the splendid
pyramid of the Matterhorn and of having a sunny exposure,
bears the large hotels of the Riftelalp and the Riffelberg, can
be reached by train, and offers every advantage the English
tourist can desire, including a glacier within easy reach.
Far less pretentious is the little inn at Findelen, but the part
of the shelf here is of great interest, for it bears the loftiest
rye-fields in Switzerland, and its blooming meadows are
carefully irrigated from the slopes above. The Schwarzsee
hotel occupies another part of the shelf, and we probably
need not labour further the point that its Ice Age glaciers
apparently overdeepened the Zermatt basin by about 1500
feet, and that in consequence, extending upwards from this
height above the valley, we have remnants of the sloping
preglacial valley floor, whose debris-strewn surface produces
fine pasture, and, in favourable spots, even corn crops.
Almost any other Alpine valley will show the same thing,
with varying clearness. The overdeepening is singularly
obvious, for instance, in the Val de Bagnes, near Fionnay,
where at an elevation of some 2000 feet up the steep slopes
seen in Plate XIII. there occurs a high terrace with a very
rich alpine flora. The absence of side-valleys here makes the
region suitable chiefly to two classes of people : — First, those
content to sit in the woods at the bottom of a well, so to
speak, and second, those who can face with equanimity a
climb of well over 2000 feet before they can go for a walk.
But it is a charming place, none the less !
Finally let us tear ourselves away from this sunny Valais,
with its dry cUmate and endless irrigation channels, and
return homewards via the Grimsel pass, in order to take a
204 THEN AND NOW IN THE ALPS
glance at the upper part of that Aare valley whose lower
reaches we have discussed so fully. As we travel from
Visp to Brig we note that here took place once the junction
of the Rhone and Aletsch glaciers, a fact which must have
some bearing upon the origin of that great basin which
stretches from Brig to Martigny, within the Rhone valley.
At the head of the valley Ave must spare time for a glance
at the existing Rhone glacier, so shrunken as compared with
its former magnificence, must also not fail to note that
the Grimsel, the pass which takes us over into the valley
of the Aare, has been worn out by an aberrant branch of
the old Rhone glacier, which pushed over into the Haslital.
Down this valley we must hurry, noting only in passing the
beautiful clearness with which the gorge and basin effect is
shown, and stopping to admire the wide basin of Innertkirchen,
and its causation in the converging valleys, once glacier-
carrying. Further, we must leave the coach in order to
inspect in detail that most perfect example of a rocky bar
which blocks the basin below, and has at one side a now
functionless notch and at the other the marvellous Aare-
schlucht, where the river has cut down a stupendous narrow
gorge through the obstruction. To appreciate the meaning
of this barrier is to find it easy to understand all those stages
from the complete bar to its last remnant in the isolated
hill or hills left in the middle of an open valley (Plate XVIII. ),
stages which one can trace in the valleys from one end of
the Alps to the other.
Nor must we forget to notice that while the ice of the old
days had its fullest erosive effect in the basin and its least
at the site of the bar, running water to-day is reversing the
process ; for it deposits alluvium in the basins, and thus
renders them more suited to human occupation, and, with
the help of its load of fine waste, wears down a part of the
bar which blocks its progress into a deep gorge, and ultimately
tends to reduce the originally continuous barrier into the
THE GORGE OF THE AARE 205
condition of an ' island hill.' Thus running water is smooth-
ing out the irregularities left by the ice.
The gorge traversed, we must hasten on to Meiringen to
catch our train for Thun or Lucerne and home, only glancing
at the Reichenbach fall as a splendid example of one of those
falls due to the overdeepening of the main valley, here, as
so frequently in Switzerland, harnessed for the use of man.
And so home with, let us hope, some increased knowledge
of ice, past and present.
References. The best description, in English, of recent views as
to the origin of the Alps is that in James Geikie's Mountains : their
Origin, Growth and Decay, 1913. Suess's monumental work, trans-
lated as The Face of the Earth, should also be consulted, but, save for
speciahsts, it is very stiff reading. For the Ice Age see James Geikie's
The Great Ice Age, third edition, 1894, and the two massive volumes of
Penck and Briickner's Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter, 1909 ; the descrip-
tions in the chapter just ended have been taken chiefly from this book.
Hobbs' Characteristics of Existing Glaciers, 1911, discusses many of
the points connected with the action of ice from, broadly speaking,
the standpoint which has been adopted here, while Bonney's The
Building of the Alps, 1912, takes the position that ice does not erode,
and in many other respects also deviates from the views usually held
by geologists. Two little books, both, belonging to the Sammlung
Goschen, Landeskunde der Schweiz, by Hermann Walser, second edition,
1914, and Sieger's Die Alpen, second edition. 1914, cost only a few pence
each and contain much interesting information. Krebs" Ldnderkunde
der dsterreichischen Alpen, with its annotated bibliographies, will be
found exceedingly useful in regard to the Eastern Alps, and treats also
the general subject to a certain extent. The Alps have so copious a
literature of their own that this list might be extended almost in-
definitely, but one other book with bibliographies may be mentioned
for the benefit of those to whom French is easier reading than German.
This is de Martonne's Traite de Geographic Physique, second edition,
1913, with a full account of glaciers and glaciation.
In regard to maps the Swiss school atlas mentioned on p. 46 has
some good plates of parts of the Alps, but for detailed study the topo-
graphic maps of the countries concerned are of course essential.
206 THEN AND NOW IN THE ALPS
Details can be found in the better class of guide-books dealing with the
special regions.
Space has not permitted of a treatment of the interesting problems
of human geography which arise in the Alps. Krebs deals with these
to some extent, and there is an interesting Uttle local guide-book,
called Das Val d'Anniviers, by Dr. Jegerlehner, which gives a good
account of conditions in the side-valleys of the Valais. For man
in the Ice Age reference may be made to Man and his Forerunners, by
Buttel-Reepen, translated by Thacker, 1913.
CHAPTER XVI
HILLS AND VALLEYS IN THE DOLOMITES
' He putteth forth his hand upon the rock ; he overturneth the
mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks ; and
his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth the floods from over-
flowing ; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to hght.'
As a contrast to the High Alps, where, to the average observer,
the most obvious features are the snow and ice of the present
and the effects of past glaciation, let us take a part of the
lower Calcareous Alps, for here the rocks make the most
insistent appeal.
The great Umestone precipices of the Calcareous Alps are
ahnost everywhere an imposing characteristic, but that
particular part of them called the Dolomites, where to
splendid chffs we have added bizarre towers and pinnacles
of wonderful beauty of colour, may be regarded as the most
striking. Further, we are fortunate in having, in addition
to many modern books of varying merit, in Gilbert and
Churchill 's Dolomite Mountains a book which, in combina-
tion with great seriousness and sobriety of statement,
exhibits that joy in exploration which is the breath of life
to a book of travel. Theirs were early days also, when the
Dolomities were ' unclimbable,' and when, we may be sure,
the ladies whose identities were so decorously concealed