Then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down two hundred feet, but it found no bottom. It came up covered with congelations--evidence enough that even if the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones, a swift death from cold was sure, anyway.
A glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow. It pushes ahead of it masses of boulders which are packed together, and they stretch across the gorge, right in front of it, like a long grave or a long, sharp roof. This is called a moraine. It also shoves out a moraine along each side of its course.
Imposing as the modern glaciers are, they are not so huge as were some that once existed. For instance, Mr. Whymper says:
"At some very remote period the Valley of Aosta was occupied by a vast glacier, which flowed down i
