A SNOW-STORM. 105 



beneath which the shivering earth (" the frozen hills 

 ached with pain," says one of our young poets) is 

 restored to warmth. When the temperature .of the 

 air is at zero, the thermometer, placed at the surface 

 of the ground beneath a foot and a half of snow, 

 would probably indicate but a few degrees below 

 freezing ; the snow is rendered such a perfect non- 

 conductor of heat mainly by reason of the quantity 

 of air that is caught and retained between the crys- 

 tals. Then how, like a fleece of wool, it rounds and 

 fills out the landscape, and makes the leanest and most 

 angular field look smooth. 



The day dawned and continued as innocent and 

 fair as the day which had preceded two mountain- 

 peaks of sky and sun, with their valley of cloud and 

 snow between. Walk to the nearest spring run on 

 such a morning, and you can see the Colorado valley 

 and the great canons of the West in miniature, 

 carved in alabaster. In the midst of the plain of 

 snow lie these chasms ; the vertical walls, the bold 

 headlands, the turrets and spires and obelisks, the 

 rounded and towering capes, the carved and but- 

 tressed precipices, the branch valleys and canons, and 

 the winding and tortuous course of the main channel 

 are all here all that the Yosemite or Yellowstone 

 have to show, except the terraces and the cascades. 

 Sometimes my canon is bridged, and one's fancy runs 

 nimbly across a vast arch of Parian marble, and that 

 makes up for the falls and the terraces. Where the 

 ground is marshy I come upon a pretty and vivid 



