44 ETERNAL SNOWS. 



rations of nature, as admirably adapted as the largest and 

 most complicated. 



THE ETERNAL SNOWS. 



The epithet " eternal " or " perpetual," applied to snow, 

 would appear to savour of the ambitious, if not of the profane. 

 Can we say of anything which belongs to earth that it is 

 " eternal ? " Assuredly not. The earth has not always worn 

 the aspect which it now wears, and, at a period not far distant 

 from its origin, could not in any region have been covered 

 with snow. Now, whatever has had a beginning cannot be 

 eternal. Many authors have, for this reason, substituted for 

 the word eternal the word perpetual. But the latter is equally 

 inapplicable. Who will venture to affirm that our globe or its 

 system will endure perpetually ? 



This difficulty, however, is one which need not particu- 

 larly embarrass us. We have been long accustomed to 

 look upon language as a simple mask, or, at least, as a 

 very dubious interpreter of thought. And we shall, there- 

 fore, continue to use indifferently the words " eternal " and 

 "perpetual." 



Let us suppose that two travellers set out from the equator, 

 that plane of separation between the northern and the southern 

 hemispheres. Let us also suppose that each proceeds in a 

 diametrically opposite direction to the other, pursuing his route 

 along one of those meridian lines which divide the earth into 

 longitudinal portions, like the slices of a melon (to compare 



