soft in substance that it seems less like velvet than
some materialised depth of dark green shadow.

II

Snow falling noiseless and unseen. One only knows that it is falling
by the blinking of our eyes as the flakes settle on their lids and
melt. The cottage windows shine red, and moving lanterns of belated
wayfarers define the void around them. Yet the night is far from dark.
The forests and the mountain-bulk beyond the valley loom softly large
and just distinguishable through a pearly haze. The path is purest
trackless whiteness, almost dazzling though it has no light. This was
what Dante felt when he reached the lunar sphere:

Parova a me, che nube ne coprisse
Lucida, spessa, solida e pulita.

Walking silent, with insensible footfall, slowly, for the snow is deep
above our ankles, we wonder what the world would be like if this were
all. Could the human race be acclimatised to this monotony (we say)
perhaps emotion would be rarer, yet more poignant, suspended brooding
on itself, and wakening by flashes to a quintessential mood. Then
fancy changes, and the thought occurs that even so must be a planet,
not yet wholly made, nor called to take her place among the sisterhood
of light and song.

III

Sunset was fading out upon the Rhaetikon and still reflected from the
Seehorn on the lake, when we entered the gorge of the Fluela--dense
pines on either hand, a mounting drift of snow in front, and faint
peaks, paling from rose to saffron, far above, beyond. There was
no sound but a tinkling stream and the continual jingle of our
sledge-bells. We drove at a foot's pace, our horse finding his own
path. When we left the forest, the light had all gone except for some
almost imperceptible touches of primrose on the eastern horns. It was
a moonless night, but the sky was alive with stars, and now and then
one fell. The last house in the valley was soon passed, and we entered
those bleak gorges where the wind, fine, noiseless, penetrating like
an edge of steel, poured slantwise on us from the north. As we rose,
the stars to west seemed far beneath us, and the Great Bear sprawled
upon the ridges of the lower hills outspread. We kept slowly moving
onward, upward, into what seemed like a thin impalpable mist, but
was immeasurable tracts of snow. The last cembras were left behind,
immovable upon dark granite boulders on our right. We entered a
formless and unbillowed sea of greyness, from which there rose dim
mountain-flan