corners, grew more and more monotonous and dreamy. There was
danger of our falling fast asleep and having to pay by the hour for a
day's repose in a gondola. If it grew much warmer, we might be compelled
to stay until the following winter in order to recover energy enough
to get away. All the signs of the times pointed northward, to the
mountains, where we should see glaciers and snow-fields, and pick
Alpenrosen, and drink goat's milk fresh from the real goat.

I.

The first stage on the journey thither was by rail to Belluno--about
four or five hours. It is a sufficient commentary on railway travel that
the most important thing about it is to tell how many hours it takes to
get from one place to another.

We arrived in Belluno at night, and when we awoke the next morning we
found ourselves in a picturesque little city of Venetian aspect, with
a piazza and a campanile and a Palladian cathedral, surrounded on all
sides by lofty hills. We were at the end of the railway and at the
beginning of the Dolomites.

Although I have a constitutional aversion to scientific information
given by unscientific persons, such as clergymen and men of letters,
I must go in that direction far enough to make it clear that the word
Dolomite does not describe a kind of fossil, nor a sect of heretics, but
a formation of mountains lying between the Alps and the Adriatic. Draw
a diamond on the map, with Brixen at the northwest corner, Lienz at the
northeast, Belluno at the southeast, and Trent at the southwest, and
you will have included the region of the Dolomites, a country so
picturesque, so interesting, so full of sublime and beautiful scenery,
that it is equally a wonder and a blessing that it has not been long
since completely overrun by tourists and ruined with railways. It
is true, the glaciers and snowfields are limited; the waterfalls are
comparatively few and slender, and the rivers small; the loftiest peaks
are little more than ten thousand feet high. But, on the other hand, the
mountains are always near, and therefore always imposing. Bold, steep,
fantastic masses of naked rock, they rise suddenly from the green and
flowery valleys in amazing and endless contrast; they mirror themselves
in the tiny mountain lakes like pictures in a dream.

I believe the guide-book says that they are formed of carbonate of lime
and carbonate of magnesia in chemical composition; but even if this be
true, it need not prejudice any candid obser