WINTER PICTURES 215 



half an hour since, where he had crossed the ridge 

 early in the morning, and now he has routed him 

 and Keynard 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 

 conjurer's trick. The very trees have turned to 

 snow. The smallest branch is like a cluster 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 adheres to them like a growth. On examination 

 I find the branches coated with ice from which 

 shoot slender 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, and fills the vistas of the woods nearly as 



