The maire's manner, also, was strange, and I suspected that the cold current of air had caused the place to be called a glaciere, with any other qualification on the part of the cave.

One thing was evident,--no snow could reach the fissure.

M.
Metrai was determined that I must not attempt the descent, pointing out, what was quite true, that though the fall was not great, there seemed no possibility of getting back up the smooth rock.

His arguments increased my suspicions; so, leaving all apparatus behind, I dropped down to join the candle, rather hoping to have the satisfaction of sending them off for a rope, in case I could not achieve the last few feet in returning, and knowing that there was no danger of the fate which once threatened the chamois-hunting Kaiser Max.[74] The drop turned out to be a mere nothing, and, taking the candle, I scrambled on, down the sloping floor of the fissure, towards the heart of the mountain, expecting every moment that my further passage would be stopped by solid rock.

But, after reaching a part so narrow that I was obliged to mount by both sides at once in order to get past it, I found a commodious gallery, opening out into a long and narrow and very lofty cavern, still only a fissure, the floor of which continued the regular and rapid slope down which I had so far come.