FOOTNOTES:

[1]

In this neighbourhood, the montagne of any commune is represented by the feminine form of the name of the village: thus, L'Arzière is the montagne of Arzier, and La Bassine of Bassin.

This has a curious effect in the case of some villages—such, for instance, as S. Georges—one of the landmarks of the district between the lakes of Joux and Geneva being the Châlet de la S. Georges, a grammatical anomaly which puzzles a stranger descending the southernmost slope of the Jura from the Asile de Marchairuz. This law of formation is not universal; for the montagnes of Rolle and S. Livres are called the Prè de Rolle and the Prè de S. Livres, while the Fruitière de Nyon is the rich upland possession of the town of that name.

[2]

Probably a relic of the time when the earlier Barons of Coppet possessed this district. The families of Grandson, Lesdiguières, and Dohna successively held the barony; and in later times the title de Coppet hid a name more widely known, for on the Châlet of Les Biolles, some distance to the east of La Baronne, the name of Auguste de Staël de Holstein de Coppet is carved, after the fashion of Swiss châlets. This was Madame de Staël's son, who built Biolles in 1817; it was afterwards sold to the commune of Nyon, and finally purchased by Arzier two or three years ago.

[3]

'Cornhill Magazine,' June 1863, 'How we slept at the Châlet des Chèvres.'

[4]

This is only a guess, made from a comparison with the ascertained heights of neighbouring points.

[5]

The patois of Vaud has a prettier name for this kind of stone—le sex (or scex) qui plliau, the weeping-stone.

[6]

I brought one of these to England, and am told that it is the Stenophylax hieroglyphicus of Stephens, or something very like that fly.

[7]

Since writing this, I have been told that some English officers who visited the cave in the August of 1864 found no ice in any part.

[8]

See also p. 231.

[9]

P. 145.

[10]

P. 301.

[11]

It is possible that the freezing of the surface may play a curious part in the phenomena of the spring season in such caves. Supposing the surface to be completely frost-bound, all atmospheric pressure will be removed from the upper surface of the water in the long fissures, and thus water may be held in suspension, in the centre of large masses of fissured rock, during the winter months. The first thorough thaw will have the same effect as the removal of the thumb from the upper orifice in the case of the hand-shower-bath; and the water thus rained down into the cave will have a temperature sufficiently high to destroy some portion of the cold stored up by the descent of the heavy atmosphere of winter, or at least to melt out the ice which may have blocked up the lower ends of the fissures.

[12]

On our previous visit, in 1861, we passed from Arzier through Longirod and Marchissy, stopping to measure and admire the huge lime-tree in the churchyard of the latter village. Our Swiss companion on that occasion was anxious that we should carry home some ice from the cave; and as the communal law forbade the removal of the ice by strangers, he hunted up a cousin in Marchissy, and sent him with a hotte across country, while we went innocently by the ordinary route through S. Georges. The cousin, however, contrived to lose himself in the woods, and we never heard of him again.

[13]

The size of this basin is exaggerated in the engraving on page 24, owing to the roughness of the original sketch.

[14]

See p. 253.

[15]

For further details on this point see pages 54 and 83.

[16]

These ladders have at best but little stability, as they consist of two uprights, careless about the coincidence of the holes, with bars poked loosely through and left to fall out or stay in as they choose, the former being the prevailing choice. One of the ladders happened to be firmer than the generality of its kind; but, unfortunately, its legs were of unequal lengths, and so it turned round with one of my sisters, leaving her clinging like a cat to the under side. When the bars are sufficiently loose, a difference of a few inches in the lengths of the legs is not of so much importance.

[17]

M. Thury found this hole, and fathomed it to a depth of 6-1/2 mètres.

[18]

Sancti Liberii locus, the Swiss Dryasdust explains. There is nothing to connect any known S. Liberius with this neighbourhood, unless it be the Armenian prince who secretly left his father's court for Jerusalem, and was sought for throughout Burgundy and other countries. It seems that Saint Oliver is merely a corruption of S. Liberius, the Italian form of the latter, Santo Liverio, having become Sant-Oliverio, as S. Otho became in another country Sant Odo, and thence San Todo, thus creating a new Saint, S. Todus.—Act SS. May 27.

[19]

My sisters made a two-days' excursion from Arzier to this glacière in the autumn of 1862, and found no snow in the bottom of the pit. They took the route by Gimel to Bière, intending to defer the visit to the glacière to the morning of the second day; but being warned by the appearance known locally as le sappeur qui fume, a vaporous cloud at the mouth of a cavern near the Dent d'Oche, on the other side of the Lake of Geneva, they caught the communal forester at once, and put themselves under his guidance. The distance from Bière is two hours' good walking, and an hour and a half for the return. There was no ladder for the final descent, and the neighbouring châlet could provide nothing longer than 15 feet, the drop being 30 feet. Two Frenchmen had attempted to make their way to the cave a week before; but the old 30-foot ladder of the previous year broke under the foremost of them, and he fell into the pit, whence he was drawn up by means of a cord composed of rack-ropes from the châlet, tied together. However useful a string of cow-ties may be for rescuing a man from such a situation, A. and M. did not care to make use of that apparatus for a voluntary descent, so they were perforce contented with a distant view of the ice from the lower edge of the pit.

[20]

See the section of this cave and pit on page 41.

[21]

A point common to the two sections, which are made by planes nearly at right angles to each other.

[22]

The dimensions of the two caves, and of the various masses of ice.

[23]

The Cartulary of Lausanne states that the wealthy village of Bière received its name from the following historical fact:—In 522, the Bishop of Lausanne, S. Prothais, was superintending the cutting of wood in the Jura for his cathedral, when he died suddenly, and was carried down on a litter to a place where a proper bier could he procured, whence the place was named Bière.

[24]

The most curious pit of this kind is the frais-puits of Vesoul, in the Vosgian Jura, which pours forth immense quantities of water after rain has fallen in the neighbourhood. The water rushes out in the shape of a fountain, and on one occasion, in November 1557, saved the town of Vesoul from pillage by a passing army. This pit is carefully described by M. Hassenfratz, in the Journal de Physique, t. xx. p. 259 (an. 1782), where he says that Cæsar was driven away from the town of Vesoul, which he had intended to besiege, by the floods of water poured forth from the frais-puits. I know of no such incident in Cæsar's life, though M. Hassenfratz quotes Cæsar's own words: the town of Vesoul, too, had no historical existence before the 9th or 10th century of our era. There is also a pit near Vesoul which contains icicles in summer, and may be the same as the frais-puits, for the old historian of Franche Comté, Gollut, in describing the latter, mentions that it is so cold that no one cares to explore it (pp. 91. 92).

[25]

See p. 122.

[26]

Jean Bontemps, Conseiller au bailliage d'Arbois.

[27]

'Allez vous en reposer, rafraischir et boire un coup au chasteau, car vous en avez bon besoin; j'ay du vin d'Arbois en mes offices, dont je vous envoyeray deux bouteilles, car je scay bien que vous ne le hayés pas.'—Petitot. iii. 9.

[28]

Mém. de la Comté de Bourgougne, Dôle, 1592, p. 486.

[29]

One of the Seigneurs de Chissey, Michaud de Changey, who died in high office in 1480, was known by preeminence as le Brave.

[30]

Dr. Buckland visited these caves in 1826, to look for bones, of which he found a great number. Gollut (in 1592) spelled the name Aucelle, and derived it from Auricella, believing that the Romans worked a gold mine there. It is certain that both the Doubs and the Loue supplied very fine gold, and the Seigneurs of Longwy had a chain made of the gold of those rivers, which weighed 160 crowns.

[31]

Dion Cass. lib. lxiii.

[32]

Ib. lib. lxvi.

[33]

Known locally as the Porte Noire, like the great Porta Nigra at Treves, and other Roman gates in Gaul.

[34]

I should be inclined, from what I saw of the country, to go to the station of Baume-les-Dames on any future visit, and walk thence to the glacière, perhaps three leagues from the station.

[35]

He was in error. The Paris correspondent of the 'Times' gave, some months since (see the impression of Jan. 20, 1865), an account of an interesting trial respecting the manufacture of the liqueur peculiar to the Abbey of Grâce-Dieu. From this account it appears that the liqueur was formerly called the Liqueur of the Grâce-Dieu, but is now known as Trappistine. It is limpid and oily; possesses a fine aroma, a peculiar softness, a mild but brisk flavour, and so on. It was invented by an ecclesiastic who was once the Brother Marie-Joseph, and prior of the convent, but is now M. Stremler, having been released by the Pope from his vows of obedience and poverty, in order that he might teach Christianity to the infidels of the New World. The Brothers took the question of the renunciation of poverty into their own hands, by declining to give up the money which Brother Marie-Joseph had originally brought into the society; so M. Stremler, being now moneyless, commenced the secular manufacture of the seductive Trappistine, in opposition to the regular manufacture within the walls of the Abbey, abstaining, however, from the use of the religious label which is the Brothers' trade-mark. The unfortunate inventor was fined and condemned in costs for his piracy.

[36]

See p. 310.

[37]

Journal des Mines, Prairial, an iv., pp. 65, &c.

[38]