o rest and refresh his men. The enemy no
longer molested him. In fact, parties were continually coming into the
camp, of men and horses, that had got lost, or had been left in the
valleys below. They came in slowly, some wounded, others exhausted
and spent by fatigue and exposure. In some cases horses came in alone.
They were horses that had slipped or stumbled, and fallen among the
rocks, or had sunk down exhausted by their toil, and had thus been
left behind, and afterward, recovering their strength, had followed
on, led by a strange instinct to keep to the tracks which their
companions had made, and thus they rejoined the camp at last in
safety.

In fact, one great reason for Hannibal's delay at his encampment on or
near the summit of the pass, was to afford time for all the missing
men to join the army again, that had the power to do so. Had it not
been for this necessity, he would doubtless have descended some
distance, at least, to a more warm and sheltered position before
seeking repose. A more gloomy and desolate resting-place than the
summit of an Alpine pass can scarcely be found. The bare and barren
rocks are entirely destitute of vegetation, and they have lost,
besides, the sublime and picturesque forms which they assume further
below. They spread in vast, naked fields in every direction around the
spectator, rising in gentle ascents, bleak and dreary, the surface
whitened as if bleached by the perpetual rains. Storms are, in fact,
almost perpetual in these elevated regions. The vast cloud which, to
the eye of the shepherd in the valley below, seems only a fleecy cap,
resting serenely upon the summit, or slowly floating along the sides,
is really a driving mist, or cold and stormy rain, howling dismally
over interminable fields of broken rocks, as if angry that it can make
nothing grow upon them, with all its watering. Thus there are seldom
distant views to be obtained, and every thing near presents a scene of
simple dreariness and desolation.

Hannibal's soldiers thus found themselves in the midst of a dismal
scene in their lofty encampment. There is one special source of
danger, too, in such places as this, which the lower portions of the
mountains are less exposed to, and that is the entire obliteration of
the pathway by falls of snow. It seems almost absurd to speak of
pathway in such regions, where there is no turf to be worn, and the
boundless fields of rocks, ragged and hard, will take no trace of