You may drive through a forest so disguised, the tongue-
tied torrent struggling silently in the cleft of the ravine, and all
still except the jingle of the sleigh bells, and you shall fancy
yourself in some untrodden northern territory - Lapland, Labrador, or
Alaska.
Or, possibly, you arise very early in the morning; totter down stairs
in a state of somnambulism; take the simulacrum of a meal by the
glimmer of one lamp in the deserted coffee-room; and find yourself by
seven o'clock outside in a belated moonlight and a freezing chill.
The mail sleigh takes you up and carries you on, and you reach the
top of the ascent in the first hour of the day. To trace the fires
of the sunrise as they pass from peak to peak, to see the unlit tree-
tops stand out soberly against the lighted sky, to be for twenty
minutes in a wonderland of clear, fading shadows, disappearing
vapours, solemn blooms of dawn, hills half glorified already with the
day and still half confounded with the greyness of the western heaven
- these will seem to repay you for the discomforts of that early
start; but as the hour proceeds, and these enchantments vanish, you
will find yourself upon the farther side in yet another Alpine
valley, snow white and coal black, with such another long-drawn
congeries of hamlets and such another senseless watercourse bickering
along the foot.
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