UP THE MIESING. 71 



my glass every snow-drift was distinctly visible, and 

 terrific places amongst those awful solitudes where no 

 living creature had ever moved. Stretching far out to 

 our left they formed an amphitheatre before us ; and 

 behind, all distant view being shut out by the Miesing, 

 was the valley between the mountains, where, just vi- 

 sible among the rocks, the deep blue of the Soen Lake 

 showed how clear the air was, and how bright the sky. 

 Opposite this lake the sides of the Miesing were covered 

 with the dark green of the latschen; but nearer to 

 where we stood all was desolation : against the sky 

 the barren and blasted rock, and thence to its foot 

 a bed of loose rolling stones, cold and monotonous 

 in hue. But it was towards the distant mountains 

 that I turned and gazed, and yet never could see 

 enough. And then again I looked at them through 

 my glass, and peered into their dark places, and at 

 their bold projections, and at their very highest pin- 

 nacles, as though I might at last be enabled to unravel 

 the mystery to discover something that might clear 

 the doubts, and so remove the strange awe that hung 

 over and around them. And still I looked, and 

 watched, and pondered, and the spell that bound my 

 gaze grew stronger, and I could not turn away. For 

 me mountains have a fascination ; and in their pre- 

 sence I sit down, and with fixed look scan their un- 

 explored summits, not in wonder, but with an over- 

 whelming sense of awe at the frozen stillness of their 

 deserts, so far beyond the sphere of all human sym- 

 pathy, where all life has ceased, and where nothing 



