ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 295 



wise setting his face to the westward across " The 

 Great Lone Land " ; Mr. Andrew Wilson carried as 

 an invalid on a litter, along slate-cornices on precipices 

 under the hanging snow-masses in the Himalayan 

 " Abode of Snow" ; or Major Burnaby, on his ride to 

 Khiva in the cold that was almost too trying for his 

 Cossack guides. What go far towards nerving the 

 men of the North to the enjoyment of their winters, or 

 of arctic weather, are the pleasures of hope and of 

 contrast. Even the employes of the Hudson Bay 

 Company have the prospect of basking through their 

 brief summer day ; and the hardiest of us would 

 scarcely care to cast in our lot for life with the 

 Esquimaux. Shaw and Forsyth, and the travellers 

 who have crossed the Hindu Kush, looked forward to a 

 welcome in the Vale of Kashmir, or in the rich vegeta- 

 tion that encircles Kashgar, sacred to the admirers of 

 the Arabian Nights ; while Burnaby, when he had 

 left the steppes behind him, drew bridle among the 

 gardens and pomegranate-groves of the Khivan 

 canals. Tourists in Europe have experienced delights 

 of the kind when, after the damp and gloom of a raw 

 Roman winter, they have taken their first spring rides 

 in the Campagna, when it was bursting almost before 

 their eyes into one vivid blush of violets ; or when, 

 after a long day and night passed in the old-fashioned 

 diligence in the frozen mud on the heights of the Morena, 

 they have rubbed their eyes, with the break of dawn, 

 among the fountains and orange-trees of sunny Cordova. 

 A balmy breath of spring in winter is soothingly re- 



