e hardest. Up over loose, broken stones that rolled
beneath our feet, up over great slopes of rough rock, up across little
fields of snow where we paused to celebrate the Fourth of July with a
brief snowball fight, up along a narrowing ridge with a precipice on
either hand, and so at last to the summit, 8600 feet above the sea.

It is not a great height, but it is a noble situation. For Nuvolau is
fortunately placed in the very centre of the Dolomites, and so commands
a finer view than many a higher mountain. Indeed, it is not from the
highest peaks, according to my experience, that one gets the grandest
prospects, but rather from those of middle height, which are so isolated
as to give a wide circle of vision, and from which one can see both the
valleys and the summits. Monte Rosa itself gives a less imposing view
than the Gorner Grat.

It is possible, in this world, to climb too high for pleasure.

But what a panorama Nuvolau gave us on that clear, radiant summer
morning--a perfect circle of splendid sight! On one side we looked down
upon the Five Towers; on the other, a thousand feet below, the Alps,
dotted with the huts of the herdsmen, sloped down into the deep-cut vale
of Agordo. Opposite to us was the enormous mass of Tofana, a pile of
gray and pink and saffron rock. When we turned the other way, we faced
a group of mountains as ragged as the crests of a line of fir-trees, and
behind them loomed the solemn head of Pelmo. Across the broad vale
of the Boite, Antelao stood beside Sorapis, like a campanile beside
a cathedral, and Cristallo towered above the green pass of the Three
Crosses. Through that opening we could see the bristling peaks of the
Sextenthal. Sweeping around in a wider circle from that point, we saw,
beyond the Durrenstein, the snow-covered pile of the Gross-Glockner; the
crimson bastions of the Rothwand appeared to the north, behind Tofana;
then the white slopes that hang far away above the Zillerthal; and,
nearer, the Geislerspitze, like five fingers thrust into the air; behind
that, the distant Oetzthaler Mountain, and just a single white glimpse
of the highest peak of the Ortler by the Engadine; nearer still we
saw the vast fortress of the Sella group and the red combs of the
Rosengarten; Monte Marmolata, the Queen of the Dolomites, stood before
us revealed from base to peak in a bridal dress of snow; and southward
we looked into the dark rugged face of La Civetta, rising sheer out of
the val