WINTER PICTURES. 241 



hound. He picked up the trail of the fox half an 

 hour since, where he had crossed the ridge early in 

 the morning, and now he has routed him and Rey- 

 nard is steering for the Big Mountain. We press on, 

 attain the shoulder of the range, where we strike a 

 trail two or three days old, of some former hunters, 

 which leads us into the woods along the side of the 

 mountain. We are on the first plateau before the 

 summit ; the snow partly supports us, but when it 

 gives way and we sound it with our legs we find it 

 up to our hips. Here we enter a white world indeed. 

 It is like some conjuror's trick. The very trees have 

 turned to snow. The smallest branch is like a clus- 

 ter of great white antlers. The eye is bewildered 

 by the soft fleecy labyrinth before it. On the lower 

 ranges the forests were entirely bare, but now we 

 perceive the summit of every mountain about us runs 

 up into a kind of arctic region where the "trees are 

 loaded with snow. The beginning of this colder 

 zone is sharply marked all around the horizon ; the 

 line runs as level as the shore line of a lake or sea ; 

 indeed a warmer aerial sea fills all the valleys, sub- 

 merging the lower peaks, and making white islands 

 of all the higher ones. The branches bend with the 

 rime. The winds have not shaken it down. It ad- 

 heres to them like a growth. On examination I find 

 the branches coated with ice from which shoot slen- 

 der spikes and needles that penetrate and hold the 

 cord of snow. It is a new kind of foliage wrought 

 by the frost and the clouds, and it obscures the sky 

 16 



