From “A Guide to the Western Alps” by John Ball, Fellow of the Royal Society and President of the Alpine Club. Published in London 1873.
(((Being an Alpinist and “cragsman”, Mr Ball has rather a lot to say about glaciers. Among his remarks from the 1870s is this casual allusion of doom for two of my favorite cities, Belgrade (on the Danube) and Turin (on the River Po).)))
“They (((he means glaciers))) are not only amongst the grandest and most impressive objects in nature, but at the same time among the most fertile in instruction to the student of her laws, while their influence on the climate and conditions of large portions of the earth is of vast importance to mankind in general.
“To form an adequate idea of the part played by glaciers in the general economy of nature, let the reader consider for a moment the consequences that would arise in our continent if they were to disappear. (((Of course the glaciers are in fact disappearing nowadays.)))
“All the greatest rivers would at once be reduced to insignificant streams, rising in rainy weather, and dwindling away in time of drought.
“The Danube nominally rises in Suabia, but its true source, which is the Inn, along with the Salza, the Drave, and its other chief tributaries, derives from the glaciers and the streams that maintain the level of the river.
“The Rhine, the Rhone, the Po, and the Adige, are fed almost exclusively by the Alpine glaciers, and it is these that maintain the abundant supplies of pure water that enable the Italian lakes to diffuse fertility throughout the Valley of the Po.”
(((Belgrade is on the glacial Danube while Torino is on the glacial Po. I’ve got a third favorite city, Austin, which has no dependence on glaciers. Instead it’s on the Colorado River, one of those “insignificant streams” Ball mentions. Historically, Texan rivers violently rise in rainfall and vanish i Texan droughts. Texans during the 20th century covered Texas with about seven thousand dams and reservoirs, large and small, making cement take the place of ice.)))
