UP THE MIESING. OV/ 



life and enlocks it in a glaze which chills vitality, while 

 the semblance of life remains. It is not of death these 

 icy solitudes remind you, but of benumbed life. 



Berger came and roused me from my musing. He 

 took my telescope, and looked at the plains of snow on 

 the distant mountains. He too felt all the magnificence 

 of the scene, and gazed around him with delight. Then 

 awoke in him the longing to climb some vast mountain, 

 where difficulties were to be overcome such as men who 

 had once encountered them like not to think of, and 

 who, while they relate, feel a shuddering and a fear. « I 

 never was on such a one," he said, " but I should like 

 to venture. If only once I could see such places \" And 

 I told him of the Ortler Spitz, deemed inaccessible until 

 a few years ago, when an old chamois hunter found a 

 way to its icy summit; and how a short time afterwards 

 he went up again with his son*that he too might find the 

 path when the father was gone, and that thus the know- 

 ledge might not die with the old hunter ; and how the 

 son, a youth of eighteen, had said there were places to be 

 passed that made his flesh creep as he hung over them ; 

 and how he vowed at the time, as he stood amid the 

 frightful chasms and walls of ice, while his heart almost 

 ceased to beat for very horror, that if God should let 

 him reach the green valleys alive, no power on earth 

 should ever make him attempt the dreadful way again. 

 And as I related, Berger stood before me with lips apart, 

 and his very eyes were listening, as he heard of those 

 unvisited regions which had for him such a mighty 

 charm, and inspired so inscrutable a longing. 



But it was time to look after our chamois. We went 

 lor ward to the place I had indicated as being the one 

 where we might best descend from the summit of the 

 mountain. The spot was steep enough, but there were 



