n
staves and splintered cart-wheels, staining the snow with blood, and
bringing broken pates, bruised limbs, and senseless comrades home to
their women to be tended.

Bacchus Alpinus shepherded his train away from us to northward, and we
passed forth into noonday from the gallery. It then seemed clear that
both conductor and postillion were sufficiently merry. The plunge they
took us down those frozen parapets, with shriek and _jauchzen_
and cracked whips, was more than ever dangerous. Yet we reached La
Rosa safely. This is a lovely solitary spot, beside a rushing stream,
among grey granite boulders grown with spruce and rhododendron: a
veritable rose of Sharon blooming in the desert. The wastes of the
Bernina stretch above, and round about are leaguered some of the most
forbidding sharp-toothed peaks I ever saw. Onwards, across the silent
snow, we glided in immitigable sunshine, through opening valleys and
pine-woods, past the robber-huts of Pisciadella, until at evenfall we
rested in the roadside inn at Poschiavo.

IV

The snow-path ended at Poschiavo; and when, as usual, we started on
our journey next day at sunrise, it was in a carriage upon wheels.
Yet even here we were in full midwinter. Beyond Le Prese the lake
presented one sheet of smooth black ice, reflecting every peak and
chasm of the mountains, and showing the rocks and water-weeds in the
clear green depths below. The glittering floor stretched away for
acres of untenanted expanse, with not a skater to explore those dark
mysterious coves, or strike across the slanting sunlight poured
from clefts in the impendent hills. Inshore the substance of the
ice sparkled here and there with iridescence like the plumelets of
a butterfly's wing under the microscope, wherever light happened to
catch the jagged or oblique flaws that veined its solid crystal.

From the lake the road descends suddenly for a considerable distance
through a narrow gorge, following a torrent which rushes among granite
boulders. Chestnut trees begin to replace the pines. The sunnier
terraces are planted with tobacco, and at a lower level vines appear
at intervals in patches. One comes at length to a great red gate
across the road, which separates Switzerland from Italy, and where the
export dues on wine are paid. The Italian custom-house is
romantically perched above the torrent. Two courteous and elegant
_finanzieri_, mere boys, were sitting wrapped in their military
cloaks and reading n