This boulder had descended from a precipice
and stopped on the ice in the middle of the glacier,
and the sun had warmed it up, every day, and consequently
it had melted its way deeper and deeper into the ice,
until at last it reposed, as we had found it, in a deep
pool of the clearest and coldest water.
Presently Baedeker was found again, and I hunted eagerly
for the time-table. There was none. The book simply said
the glacier was moving all the time. This was satisfactory,
so I shut up the book and chose a good position to view
the scenery as we passed along. I stood there some time
enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did
not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. I said to myself,
"This confounded old thing's aground again, sure," - and
opened Baedeker to see if I could run across any remedy
for these annoying interruptions. I soon found a sentence
which threw a dazzling light upon the matter. It said,
"The Gorner Glacier travels at an average rate of a little
less than an inch a day." I have seldom felt so outraged.
I have seldom had my confidence so wantonly betrayed.
I made a small calculation: One inch a day, say thirty
feet a year; estimated distance to Zermatt, three and
one-eighteenth miles. Time required to go by glacier,
A LITTLE OVER FIVE HUNDRED YEARS! I said to myself, "I can
WALK it quicker - and before I will patronize such a fraud
as this, I will do it."
When I revealed to Harris the fact that the passenger part
of this glacier - the central part - the lightning-express part,
so to speak - was not due in Zermatt till the summer
of 2378, and that the baggage, coming along the slow edge,
would not arrive until some generations later, he burst
out with:
"That is European management, all over! An inch a day - think
of that! Five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles!
But I am not a bit surprised. It's a Catholic glacier.
You can tell by the look of it. And the management."
I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it
was in a Catholic canton.
"Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris.
"It's all the same. Over here the government runs
everything - so everything's slow; slow, and ill-managed. But
with us, everything's done by private enterprise - and then
there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it.
I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old
slab once - you'd see it take a different gait from this."
I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there
was trade enough to justify it.
