A SNOW-STORM 95 



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 crystals. 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 Colo- 

 rado valley and the great cartons 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 buttressed precipices, the branch valleys 

 and caiions, 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 caiion 

 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 illustration 



