Chaniois-Huntiuir 5 2 1 



moments, leaving everything clear and bright ; then 

 a small cloud, ' like a man's hand,' would form on 

 the side of some distant peak, and spreading out 

 with inconceivable rapidity, would envelop us in its 

 boiling wreaths, while the wind, ever and anon rush- 

 ing down some unexpected gully, cut a tunnel right 

 through it, giving us glimpses of distant mountains 

 and snow-fields looking near and strange as if seen 

 through a telescope. 



At last the sun began to shine out cheerily and 

 steadily, and the breeze gave a freshness and buoyancy 

 to our spirits never to be felt except on high moun- 

 tains. The heavy atmosphere of the valleys squeezes 

 one's soul into its case, and sits on the lid like an 

 incubus. That blessed mountain-spirit is the only 

 power who takes the lid off altogether, and lets the 

 soul out of its larva-case to revel in the strange 

 beauties of his domain without restraint. 



After a time we found ourselves in a region of 

 snow-fields, filling up broad valleys lying calm and 

 shadowless in the bright sunshine. Here and there 

 they were marked by delicate blue lines, where the 

 crevasses allowed the substratum of ice to be seen, 

 showing that these apparently eternal and immov- 

 able plains of snow were slowly but steadily flowing 

 downwards, to appear as splintered glaciers in the 

 valleys far below ; and here and there, again, dark 

 ridges, standing sharply up from the snow -bed, 

 marked the course of buried mountain-ranges, and 

 gave some idea of the vast depths of the deposit. 



