There is an amazingly silly proverb which quite mistakenly tells us that “seeing is believing.” The most ordinary conjurer at a village entertainment will prove the falsity of this saying. For who has not seen one of these plausible mountebanks put a watch into a top-hat, and, after clearly smashing it into a thousand pieces with a pestle, stir up the disintegrated fragments with a spoon and produce an omelette? Or who is so unacquainted with the affairs of the village schoolroom at Christmas as not to have seen a solid billiard-ball or a lively canary squeezed out of the side of a friend’s head? Such phenomena are by no means rare, and occur periodically all over England. The observer’s eyes have told him that he has seen such things, and the verb “to see” is merely a compendious expression to indicate that on the evidence of your eyes such or such a phenomenon has actually occurred. But no one believes that the disintegrated watch has become an omelette though ocular evidence—seeing—insists that it has. It was a conjuring trick. And this leads me to the consideration of the phenomena on which this whole book is based.

For High Alpine resorts in winter are a conjuring trick of a glorious and luminous kind. Our commonsense, based on experience, tells us that ice is cold, but is melted by heat; and that snow is wet; and that unless you put on a greatcoat when the thermometer registers frost, you will feel chilly; and that if you frequently fall down in the snow you will be wet through, and if you do not change your clothes when you return home you will catch a cold. All these things are quite obvious, and he who does not grant them as premises to whatever conclusion we may happen to base on them, is clearly not to be argued with, but soothed and comforted like a child or taken care of like a lunatic. But High Alpine winter resorts give, apparently, ocular disproof of all these obvious statements, and those who go out to these delectable altitudes in favourable seasons see (which is ocular evidence) every day and all day the exact opposite of these primitively simple prepositions regularly and continually taking place. They sit in the sun, when they are tired of skating, and see that though a torrid luminary beats down on the frozen surface, burning and browning the faces of their friends, the ice remains perfectly dry and unmelted; they trudge through snow, and find that they are not wet; they see the thermometer marking anything up or down to thirty degrees of frost, and go out coatless and very likely hatless, and are conscious only of an agreeable and bracing warmth; they go ski-ing and all day are smothered in snow, and yet return dry and warm and comfortable to their hotels, and do not catch any cold whatever. Shakespeare once made an allusion of some kind (I cannot look all through his plays to find it) about hot ice, meaning to employ a nonsensical expression. But it is the most striking testimonial to the magnificence of his brain that all he ever wrote meant something, although, as in this instance, he designed it not to. For without doubt he was alluding to what appears to occur at St. Moritz or MÜrren.

But it is all a conjuring trick, or so these altitudinists are disposed to think when they return home to the dispiriting chills of a normal February in England, and find that when the thermometer marks 45° or thereabouts they shiver disconsolately in the clemming cold. Even when they were out in Switzerland they hardly believed what appeared to be happening, for they found that if the weather changed, and instead of the windless calm, or a light north-wind, the FÖhn-wind blew from the south-west, warm and enervating, then, in proportion as the thermometer mounted, they felt increasingly cold. All these things, though they thought they saw and felt them, were of the nature of a conjuring trick, and they never, after their return to the lowlands, really believed them. It was obviously impossible that they could have felt warm and dry, after being rolled in the snow. It must have been an illusion, capable of immediate disproof if they now went out without a coat, or sat down on a snowy London pavement. A pleasant illusion, no doubt, but clearly an illusion. It was like the omelette emerging from the top-hat, into which a watch had, only a moment before, been placed and pestled.

And if those who think they have experienced these phenomena, which so clearly contradict the most elementary laws of Nature, cannot fully believe in them when they re-enter the chilly spring of England, still less do those who have not experienced them find it possible even to simulate credulity when the foolish Alpinist recounts them. I rather fancy that people who have never been to the high altitudes in winter, believe that all those who say they have done so, and come back and tell their friends that sun does not melt ice, and that snow is dry, and that ten degrees of frost is an agreeable temperature to stroll about in without a coat, are in some sort of inexplicable conspiracy. But the conspiracy is so widely spread now, and is still spreading so fast, that one’s remarks on the subject are received with politeness nowadays, though still with incredulity. Some strange wandering of the wits has taken possession of the conspirators, who are otherwise harmless. And, such is the force with which their illusion holds them, and so anxious are they that credence should be given to it, that they employ some sort of skin-dye to add completeness to their strange tales, and appear with brown hands and faces when they come back to the anÆmic metropolis. They are clearly the victims of some obscure but infectious derangement of the brain, of which the chief symptoms are those strange illusions and an immense appetite.... And, as I have said, the victims of these illusions, before they have spent many days in England, are already themselves wondering whether all these things really were so, or whether they were but the fabric of a pleasing dream. But they make plans to dream again about the middle of the ensuing autumn, and for the most part find that the vision is recapturable. It is all great nonsense; but if you take a suitable ticket at a suitable time of the year, and go where that ticket will allow you, the nonsense is found to be recurrent.

I do not know whether ice and snow, and all the forms of the “radiant frost,” as Shelley calls it, are in themselves more beautiful than the spectacle, to which we are accustomed, of an unfrozen world, or whether it is merely because we are unused to the gleams and sparkle of these whitenesses, that we find them so entrancingly lovely. It would be interesting, for instance, to ascertain whether an Esquimo or other dweller in the Arctics accustomed to ice, would go into ecstasies of admiration at the sight—shall we say—of Hyde Park Corner on a moist warm day of September, when the roadway is swimming in a thick brown soup of mud, and gusts of tepid rain stream on the wind-swept lamp-posts, thus supporting the idea that it is to the novelty of the spectacle that the arousing of our appreciation is due. Certainly it would be hard to say that anything in the world is more beautiful than a beech-tree in spring, or a crimson rambler in full flower, or glimpses of the Mediterranean in a frame of grey-green olive-trees; and I am inclined to believe that it is partly the contrast which a sunny morning in winter among the High Alps presents to all that a Londoner has known or dreamed of hitherto that partly accounts for the ineffable impressions it never fails in producing on him. And to that we must add the exhilarating and invigorating effect of the still dry air, and the sun that all day pours Pactolus over the gleaming fields. In such an air and in such a flood of light all our senses and perceptions are quickened, the vitality of our organs is increased, and with the wonderful feeling of bien-Être which the conditions give, our appreciation is kindled too. I always feel that it must have been on a frosty morning that David said: “I opened my mouth and drew in my breath.” And perhaps on that day the cedars of Lebanon were covered with the crystals of hoar-frost, and below the snowy uplands the dim blue of the sea slept insapphirined at the bases of the shining cliffs....

I lick the chops of memory, and go back in thought to the middle of December, when, having previously determined not to go abroad till January, I hurriedly fly the country, like a criminal seeking to escape from the justice that is hot on the heels of a murderer. In such wise do I fly from my conscience—conscience, I may remark, is one of the things that everybody leaves behind when he goes to the High Alps: apparently it and other poisonous organisms, such as the bacillus of tuberculosis cannot exist in those altitudes—while below my breath I again register the frequently broken vow that I will be at home again by the middle of January at the latest. For indeed it seems impossible to tolerate London any longer just now: the fogs have begun (these are the excuses with which I seek to stay the protests of conscience, before I fly from it), and for three days last week we lived in a thick and ominous twilight of dusky orange, tasting evilly of soot and sulphurous products. At intervals a copper-coloured plate showed itself above the house roofs: and, oh, to think that this mean metallic circle was indeed none other than the hot radiant giant that in the happier climes was rejoicing to run his course across the turquoise expanse of cloudless sky; that this remote and meaningless object was the same that sparkled on dazzling peak and precipice and turned the untrodden snows to sheets of diamond dust. Then after three days of Stygian gloom the fog was dispersed by a shrewd and shrill north wind, and for a whole morning snow fell heavily, which, as it touched the pavements and roadways of town more than usually befouled by the fog, turned into a base and degrading substance resembling melting coffee-ice. The streets swam in the icy treacle of it, and motor-buses and other ponderous vehicles cast undesired helpings of it at the legs of foot-passengers. After this dispiriting day the weather changed again and a tepid south-westerly gale squealed through the streets. This was too much: I bought a quantity of what is known as sermon-paper and two new stylographs (this was another sop to conscience, and implied the intention of working out in Switzerland), made a few hasty and craven arrangements on the telephone, and slid out of Charing Cross Station at 2.20 P.M. precisely next day, leaving conscience, like an abandoned wife, sobbing on the platform.

Now, while journeys, whether on land or sea, are apt to be but tiresome businesses when they are undertaken at the call of some tedious errand, they are vastly different affairs when they conduct the traveller to joyful places and delectable pursuits. They are coloured by that which awaits him at the end of them (like the sweetness of sugar permeating tea), and this particular progress is to me full of romantic happenings. Dusk is already closing in before I reach the coast, and as the train halts on the hill above Folkestone, before being towed backwards down to the harbour, I can see the lights beginning to twinkle in the town and along the pier, which is surrounded by the great grey immensity of the wave-flecked sea. A fine rain is falling dismally, and as I hurry across the slippery quay I am weighed down by an enormous greatcoat (the pockets of which, I am sorry to say, are “salted” by various packets of cigarettes, which is why I wear it), and I stagger under the weight of a suit-case, sooner than part with which I would die. For the French or Swiss railway companies often (no doubt with humorous intent) arrange that the traveller’s large luggage shall not arrive for twenty-four hours or so after he has got to his destination, and in less experienced years I have packed my boots and skates in these detained trunks, and have been obliged to wait in savage inaction till the railway company has come to the end of its joke, just as one waits for the end of a long funny story. Not so now: my inseparable bag contains my large and cumbrous skate-shod boots as a first charge, and after they have been stowed, the mere necessities of life, like clothes and dressing-case, as opposed to its joys, fill the rest. Even in the harbour the steamer sways with the back-wash of the heavy seas outside, and the mooring-ropes squeak and strain to its unease. I stick in the narrow gang-plank that conducts in precipitous incline to the deck (at least the corner of my suit-case does, which is part of my identity); a faint and awful smell of red plush sofas and cold beef comes up from the stairs leading to the saloon; the tarpaulins, rigged up along the open passage between decks, flap uneasily and are buffeted by the rain-soaked wind, and sailors hurry about with white japanned tin objects in their hands....

All this sounds dismal and dispiriting enough, but such incidents, I repeat, take their colour from that to which they lead the traveller, and when bound for Switzerland they are all haloed in a vague pleasurable sense of excitement and romance. We put out on the turbulent and windy sea, and as we round the end of the pier the whole boat shivers as a great white-headed wave strikes her. It is cold and wet on deck, but I have to linger there while the cliffs of my beloved native land vanish into the grey of the swift on-coming night, and feel a perfect glow of enthusiasm at the idea of not setting eyes on them again for another month or so (probably “so”: because conscience is now far away, perhaps still waiting at Charing Cross Station, in case I return by the next train), and already I am beginning to be doubtful whether I really made a vow to be back by the middle of January. I pass rows of silent figures with closed eyes reclining on deck-chairs in the more sheltered corners: then the whole ship makes a scooping curtsey into the trough of a wave, and the water pours sonorously on to the deck. Shrill whistles the wind in the rigging, and a raucous steam-siren proclaims to all the traffic in the Channel that we are off to Switzerland to skate, having left our consciences and the white cliffs of England behind us, and not caring two straws, at this delightful moment, as to whether we ever see any of them again.

I love the landing on the friendly shores of France, the waiting while the ship is reluctantly coaxed sidling up to the pier, the hustle to get through the custom-house and enter the warm, well-lit train. The foreign tongue is delightful to the ear: so, too, to the eye, the blue-bloused porters, and the unplatformed station, where the huge carriages tower high above one, emitting mysterious jets of steam. All is strange and new and delightful: the engine of unaccustomed build and outlandish voice, the grey upholstered compartments with their hot-carpeted floors, the restaurant car with bottle-filled racks, where presently I sit, part of a moving pageant of eating and drinking, as we shriek through stations and scour with ever-increasing velocity through the darkness of a stormy night. At Laon mysterious jugglings take place: another string of carriages is slowly shunted on to our train, to the accompaniment of many cries of warning and encouragement and wavings of lanterns, and the buffers come home with a soft thud. We cast off our tail, lizard-like, which is hauled away to travel divergently to Basle, and soon we are thundering on again by the more direct route to Berne. At some timeless hour a long halt is made, and compartment doors are flung open with the sonorous proclamation of the arrival of les messieurs de la douane. Enter les messieurs, and at their sesame bags fly open, and with strange staves they explore the hidden recesses under the seats, in their nightly search for laces and spirits and cigarettes and all the contraband of peace. Soon this complimentary visit is over, the green shades are adjusted again over the lamps, and the vibration and rhythm of the racing wheels mingle and blend themselves into the blurred edges of dream....

I do not wake until we are actually slowing down to enter Berne—that city so justly famous for its bears, its President of this delectable republic, and its terrace from which the eager tourist vainly scans the impenetrable clouds which invariably screen from his view all possible glimpses of the mountains of the Oberland. Whenever I arrive at Berne it is always a grey chilly morning, just above freezing point, so that the icy streets are half slush. At first this used to depress me with ominous forebodings of a thaw at the higher altitudes: now I know that all the winter through it is always just thawing at Berne, and that the sky there always is heavily be-clouded. I think a sunny frosty morning there would cause me some considerable anxiety, for it would imply a complete upset of climatic conditions, and midsummer might be expected to hold its abhorred sway on the heights. So in perfect equanimity I climb back again into our train—heated to the temperature of the second hottest room in a Turkish bath—and we jog in more leisurely fashion through the half-frozen villages towards the lake of Thun. These villages are mainly composed of houses taken from the larger-sized boxes of toys, with stones fastened down on their wood-shingle eaves to prevent their roofs blowing away, and with staircases, clearly built for ornament, and completely unpractical, climbing up the outside of their walls. Stations and banks and hotels seem to be constructed with a view to moderate permanence; the rest are clearly so made that they can be taken up and planted down somewhere else. Then as we emerge on to the edges of the lake, higher hills begin to tower across its steely-grey levels, and rifts in the clouds that shroud their heads and hunched shoulders show glimpses of sun that shine on the whiteness of snow. Mile after mile we pursue a meandering way along the shores, and thread the darkness of hoarse tunnels, whose lips are fringed with dripping icicles, and the sense of something coming, something high and clear, begins to grow. Though in front, where Interlaken lies, a veil of grey-blue mist is interspersed between us and that which, I know, soars above it, the clouds are beginning on all sides to become unravelled like wool-work pulled out, and through the rents and torn edges gleams of turquoise sky are seen. High up climb serrated rims of rock, cut vividly clear against the blue and fringed with aspiring pines; higher yet, where the boldest of these brave vegetables can find no footing, further ridges appear austere and empty and gleaming. Yet these are but the outlying buttresses and ramparts of the great towers at the base of which they lean and cluster: to-night we shall sleep in an eyrie far above them, and far above us yet will watch the unscaled precipices of the great range, over the edge of which the unheeding stars climb and swim into sight all night long, pouring the golden dew of their shining upon forest and glacier, until the snows are rosy with dawn.

We paused in Interlaken Central Station to draw breath after our lake-side amble. Here the snow lay crisp and hard-trodden in the streets, but overhead the gutters gurgled and the eaves of houses dripped with its melting in this brilliant morning. No shred of cloud was left in all the shining heavens, and like the flanks of a galloped horse the pine-clad hillsides steamed in the sun.... And then the miracle.... As we steamed forth again to the Eastern station, a long valley lying between two wooded hills opened out, and there, clear in the light of the young day, and white with virgin snows and blue with precipices of ice, and set in the illimitable azure, rose the Queen of Mountains, the maiden, the Jungfrau, peaked and domed and pinnacled in ineffable crystal.

The Jungfrau is and will always be my mistress among mountains, as she was when I first saw her at the age of twelve. One mistake I have made in my conduct towards her, and that was ten years later when I climbed her—and yet who could tell she would prove so tedious and heavy (not in hand but in foot)? For I approached the lady of my adoration from the Concordia hut, and instead of feasting my eyes at every step on her queenly gracious carriage and maiden slenderness, I found that the closer I got to her the more did she appear round-shouldered, not to say hump-backed. In addition, a quantity of fresh snow had fallen, and we had a long tiresome and utterly unexciting trudge, a hot and stodgy affair. I had imagined that ventures and perils would have to be encountered for this wooing and winning of her, with balancings and poisings on stairways of precipitous ice and needles of pinnacled rock: instead she had to be solidly and laboriously and dully approached; it was like wooing some great bolster or gigantic cow. For a little while after that I cared nothing for her; she was a mature and silent barmaid of vast proportions, but gradually her charm and enchantment cast their spell over me again, the dissolution of which I intend never to risk in the future, unless I approach her by a more hazardous and daring route. To those who approach her dully, she gives herself dully: the more daring wooer she may perhaps kill, but she does not bore him.

But the wonder of her, when seen through clear air with the brilliant winter sky around her head from the entrance to this valley that leads up to Lauterbrunnen! Up it we steamed in a little angry rattling snorting train, which cut itself in half to take some of its aspiring contents to Grindelwald on the left, and others among whom I numbered myself to Wengen and to MÜrren. By the side of our way ran a turbulent mountain stream fed by the glaciers of the Oberland, too swift to freeze altogether, but with its backwaters and sheltered reaches covered over with lids of ice. For all its glacier-birth steam rose from it in the icy air that hovered in shaded places, and the alders and hazels that hung over it were thickly encrusted with the marvellous jewellery of the hoar-frost, spiked and parsemÈs and refoliaged in wondrous winter growth with tendrils and scrolls of minutest diamond-dust. Narrower grew the valley, steeper and taller the wooded hills that overhung it till at last we reached Lauterbrunnen, close to which the Staubbach, most amazing of all waterfalls, leaps a clear eight hundred feet from the edge of the high plateau-shelf, which skirts along the mountain-side on to the rocks below. Even in summer, when the melting of the snows that feed the stream make it of far greater volume than when the stricture of frost is on it, the water, poured as from a jug-spout, disintegrates in its fall, so that it reaches the valley more in wreaths of mist than in solid water, and collects again from the dripping rocks; while in winter its diminished volume is further spent in the manufacture of the huge icicles that fringe the edge of its leaping-place, and hang in great streamers, the beard and hair, you would say, of the very Frost-king himself, who sits at ease on this precipitous throne. Little water to-day runs away from where the clouds of mist and water-smoke fall on the rocks, for most of them are frozen there, and a layer of ice covers the boulders where they come to earth. For here, so engorged lies the valley, so close to the great rampart of the Oberland, that the sun which blazed on Interlaken has not yet surmounted the barrier of mountain-peaks.

Parallel with the Staubbach, and up a hillside which appears hardly less sheer than the precipice itself, runs the funicular railway which leads to the MÜrren-plateau. At first sight it seems as if it must be meant for a practical joke, constructed by humorous engineers to astonish the weak minds of travellers, and, though practical from the point of view of a joke, to be perfectly impracticable as a means of conveyance. Its steepness is that of disordered images seen in a dream, and it was with a sense of utter incredulity that I first took my place in one of the small wooden compartments and was locked in by an apparently sane and serious conductor. He blew a whistle, or a bell sounded, just as is done on real lines of traffic, and immediately afterwards we began to ascend that impossible line of rails, sauntering with smooth and steady progress up that ridiculous precipice. More amazing still we soon observed a similar car sauntering steadily down it, just strolling down, even as we were strolling up. We met, we passed, and I had a vision of passengers smoking and chatting, as if nothing in the least remarkable was happening and imminent death did not await us all....

But more remarkable things than that were happening. Upwards from the valley we climbed on this Jacob’s ladder that reached if not to Heaven, to very heavenly places. Pine woods and rocks melted away below, streaming quietly downwards; presently we were level with the top of the towering precipice from which the Staubbach was discharged, and presently that too was left below. But higher as we mounted there climbed with us, in fresh unfoldings of glaciers and peaks and glittering snow fields, the great range of the Oberland. New peaks “met Heaven in snow,” new arÊtes, too steep and wind-swept to allow a vestige of snow to lie there pointed arrow-like to the tops above them. Eiger, Monch, Silberhorn, and Jungfrau towered glittering just across the Lauterbrunnen valley from which we had come, and as we sidled along the upland shelf on which MÜrren stands, gradually the whole range spread itself out in tremendous rampart, radiant, rejoicing, and austere. For foreground was this narrow ledge of white fields dotted here and there with cattle-chÂlets, and pines scattered singly or in companies, all wearing plumes and tippets of snow that made their foliage seem a black blot in the sunlight, and soon the congregation of village roofs appeared, and MÜrren stood bathed and basking in sunshine, drowned, so to speak, in the sparkling champagne of the invigorating winter morning. And the intoxication of the high places, an entrancing vintage of oxygen and ice and sun, invaded limb and sinew and brain.

It is supposed by those who have never seen the infinite variety of forms into which frost converts mist and dew and all manner of water, that there must be a monotony in those vast expanses of snow and ice. They figure to themselves the depressing spectacle of snow as it usually appears in England, smooth and soft and wet, and too close a cousin to slush not to be tainted with a family resemblance; the image called up by ice is a grey surface in which are imbedded dead leaves, twigs and stones thrown on to it by boys for purposes not clearly understandable, while all they know of hoar-frost is an evanescent decoration that occurs at the edges of ditches and on lawns when tea is being made in the morning and disappears as soon as the poached eggs, leaving the grass soaked and dripping. But as is crystal to soap so are those radiant congelations of the High Alps to the same as seen beneath grey skies and unluminous days. Here, if snow has fallen, as sometimes happens, while wind is blowing, it is driven into all manner of curving wave crests and undulations; then when the fall is over, the sky clears again, a night of frost hardens and congeals the outlines, and the trees wear fine feathers and plumes of whiteness. As the snowfall packs with its own weight, there grows on the surface of the fields a crust half snow, half ice, covered with dazzling minute crystals. During the fall of the snow there has been moisture in the air, and often on that brilliant morning that succeeds the fall, the air is full of minute frozen particles of water that sparkle like the old-fashioned glass-decoration on Christmas cards, so that one walks through a shining company of tiniest diamond fire-flies. And the frozen surface of snow reflects the wonderful azure and gold of sun and sky, and here in the blaze it lies white beneath a vivid yellow, there in the shade a dim blue permeates it. After a few days of hot sun more of the fall will have melted and slipped from the trees, and they stand black-foliaged and red-trunked waiting for the decoration of the hoar-frost. The one more night of frost covers every sprig and fir-needle with amazing spikes and fernlike sprays of minute crystal. Wondrous are their growths, more particularly if, as sometimes happens, some cold mist comes up from the valleys. Then with a craze for decoration almost ludicrous, you shall see your friends with hair and eyebrows bedecked with these jewels, each separate hair wearing its frozen garniture, and their coats and stockings ornamented in like manner. They grow white in a single minute almost; and such as have moustaches, close to the moisture of their breath will suddenly turn to walruses with long dependence of icicles. And yet—here is a conjuring trick again—though ice and frost frame their faces they are conscious of no cold at all.

Marvellous, too, are the dealings of the frost with the running streams and the lakes such as those at St. Moritz or Davos or Sils. Often, unfortunately, it happens that a snowfall will occur when they are but lightly frozen over, in which case the snow quite covers them, breaks through perhaps in places, and with the ice already formed, makes a rough uneven surface useless to the skater, and to the beholder no more than a level snow-field, with perhaps ugly stains on it where the water has come through and formed the grey ice, which is of no artistic moment. But sometimes it happens that a snowfall occurs before any ice has formed on the lake, and thus, though it lies on the surrounding ground, it melts in the water, and at the end of the fall the lake is still unfrozen, though the winter mantle lies over field and wood. Then let us suppose there comes a hard frost with no more snow. Night after night ice absolutely clear like glass forms on the water and gradually thickens. If the days are windless it is entirely smooth, and practically invisible, so that it is impossible to believe that you are not looking on a sheet of water. Then the glad word goes forth that the lake bears, and you hurry forth to skate on it. But mountain and wood and landscape are all mirrored in it as in perfectly still water, and it is almost incredible that here is ice a foot or two thick. Tremblingly you launch yourself on it, scarcely able to believe in its solidity; for through that unwavering surface you see every weed and stump under water. The very fishes flit and flick visibly below your feet, and so glassy is it that through it it is possible to see the subaqueous foundations of the lacustrine dwellings in the lake of Sils, never to be seen unless the lake is frozen, since the slightest ripple of the water sets the surface a-quiver and mars its translucency. But seen through this foot or so of perfectly clear ice—black ice, as it is called—it is as if one looked through that charming contrivance called the bathyscope, by which you can observe the depths of the sea. Below the ice, the water lies still and in a calm sheltered by this solid ceiling of crystal, and you see, as if in an aquarium, the fishes and the water-weeds, and all the gales that ever blew will not shatter the reflections or obscure the depths. Then when your courage has come to you, and you begin to grasp the fact that an army might march across this invisible plain of ice without breaking through, you will no doubt venture forth from the shore, and feel what you never feel on rinks and other prepared surfaces of ice, the divine elasticity of your floor. And very likely just when you are some half-mile from the shore, you will be terror-stricken to hear a crack as of artillery resound close to you, and a great crack will zigzag like lightning through the ice. The first time you hear that, the present writer is willing to wager any reasonable sum that your face will blanch (unless too sun-tanned) and you will skate with incredible celerity for the nearest land. But that salvo portends no danger whatever, except if your skate-blade enters such a crack (of which there will be, unfortunately, a considerable number in the course of a few days) longitudinally. Then it is true you may have a fall, but these explosions do not mean that you will ever be food for fishes.

But after a few days, in all probability, even though no snow falls, the surface of the ice, except where it is kept swept, becomes useless for skating, thanks to another of the wonderful conjuring tricks of the frost. Owing to dew, or from other moisture in the air, there begin to form upon the ice little nuclei of hoar-frost such as are seen in Plate VI. They look harmless enough, and with perfect justice you admire their exquisite fanlike fronds, and think no more of them. But in a couple of days the same surface, as shown from the identical point of view in Plate VII, presents a totally different aspect, and one which is clearly discouraging to the most ardent of skaters. But then, since you are finally and completely and irrevocably thwarted in any ambition to skate on this depressing surface (for it is as if all the ice-moles in the world had made their common earth there, multiplying exceedingly), you will be wise to examine and admire the astounding forms of this fairy frost-work before it becomes confluent, and, losing the individuality of its separate tufts, covers the whole lake like powdery snow. In Plate VIII you may see the marvellous delicacy in detail of these bouquets of frost-flowers, and the same on larger scale in Plate IX, where they are already becoming a very jungle of anti-tropical growth.

In that wonderful poem “By the Fireside,” Robert Browning, in speaking of the Alps in autumn, says:

And that which he weds to such lovely language is another of the spells which the circle of the Alpine day and night weaves round us. Only, I think, in winter the silence which he speaks of at evening, or, he might have added at night, is a thing incredible to those who, I may almost say, have never heard that silence. In spring or summer or autumn it is broken by sounds of cowbells perhaps, and, almost certainly by a murmur of wind in pine-woods, or of water hurrying from the heights. But in winter, on a still evening those evidences of life are dumb, and yet the silence itself is pregnant with vitality. At sunset the high tops burn in rose-coloured flame, and as the glory fades into the toneless velvet of the frosty sky, the stars in their wheeling are of a brilliance utterly unknown to lower altitudes, except perhaps where the desert lies fallow and dry beneath Egyptian skies, and no emanation from the earth dims the burning of these “patins of bright gold.” But that “quiring to the bright-eyed Seraphim” reaches not the mortal ear, and at evening or at night in these High Alps, there is felt, as it were, that ecstasy of silence that seems on the point of bursting into chorus: “it must get rid of what it knows.” Nowhere else have I felt so rapturous a quality of stillness: the frozen snow lies taut under the grip of the immense energy of the frost: no avalanches slipping from the snow-laden flanks of the Jungfrau under the hot beams of the sun, startle the valley with sonorous thunder: the wind stirs not the lightest needle of the pines; the villagers are home from the frozen fields, and doors are shut. Slowly the last rose-colour fades from the peaks, and the stars brighten, and you hold your breath to hear the most wonderful thing you have ever heard—utter stillness, that yet is strained almost to bursting point with the energies that make it, the peace that passes understanding that lies above the snow and beneath the stars....

Then having heard it, having thought perhaps you understood it, or best of all, being conscious that you do not understand it at all, you may start for home, and glide on your skis down a slope to the very doors of your hotel. Probably you will have a great many falls, for it is the most difficult thing in the world—which is saying a good deal—to ski with the smallest success in a fading or faded light. But you will have heard the silence of the winter night: that will generously console you for your misadventures....