As far as we could judge, there would have been abundant room to pass down the slope under the archway, if only the preliminary 60 feet could by any means have been accomplished; and I shall dream for long of what there must be down there.
As I was anxious to know whether the side of the pit was vertical ice under our feet, I contrived to get about a third of the way round the edge, so as almost to reach the fluting in the rock which formed the farther side of the pit, and then desired the schoolmaster to raise the candle slowly from the ledge on which it still rested.

As he pulled it gradually up, I was startled to find that the ice fell away sharply immediately below the spot where we had been collected, and then formed a solid wall; so that we had been standing on the mere edge of a shelf, with nothing but black emptiness below.

How far the solid wall receded at the bottom I was unable to determine, for the light of one candle was of very little use at so great a distance, and in darkness so profound.
I persuaded the maire to make an effort to reach a point from which he could see the insecurity of the ice which had seemed to form so solid a floor; and he was so much impressed by what he saw, that he fled with precipitation from the cave, and we eventually found him asleep under a bush on the rocks above.

In reaching the farther side of the pit, we crossed unwittingly an ice-bridge formed by a transverse pit or tunnel in the ice, which opened into the pit we were examining.

The maire afterwards promised to rail off all that end of the glaciere, and forbid his workmen to venture upon it.