. . .
CHAPTER IX - DAVOS IN WINTER
A MOUNTAIN valley has, at the best, a certain prison-like effect on
the imagination, but a mountain valley, an Alpine winter, and an
invalid's weakness make up among them a prison of the most effective
kind. The roads indeed are cleared, and at least one footpath
dodging up the hill; but to these the health-seeker is rigidly
confined. There are for him no cross-cuts over the field, no
following of streams, no unguided rambles in the wood. His walks are
cut and dry. In five or six different directions he can push as far,
and no farther, than his strength permits; never deviating from the
line laid down for him and beholding at each repetition the same
field of wood and snow from the same corner of the road. This, of
itself, would be a little trying to the patience in the course of
months; but to this is added, by the heaped mantle of the snow, an
almost utter absence of detail and an almost unbroken identity of
colour. Snow, it is true, is not merely white. The sun touches it
with roseate and golden lights. Its own crushed infinity of
crystals, its own richness of tiny sculpture, fills it, when regarded
near at hand, with wonderful depths of coloured shadow, and, though
wintrily transformed, it is still water, and has watery tones of
blue.
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