he had crossed the ridge early in the morning, and now he has routed
him and Reynard is steering for the Big Mountain. We press on and
attain the shoulder of the range, where we strike a trail two or
three days old of some former hunters, which leads us into the woods
along the side of the mountain. We are on the first plateau before
the summit; the snow partly supports us, but when it gives way and
we sound it with our legs, we find it up to our hips. Here we enter
a white world indeed. It is like some conjurer's trick. The very
trees have turned to snow. The smallest branch is like a cluster of
great white antlers. The eye is bewildered by the soft fleecy
labyrinth before it. On the lower ranges the forests were entirely
bare, but now we perceive the summit of every mountain about us runs
up into a kind of arctic region where the trees are loaded with
snow. The beginning of this colder zone is sharply marked all around
the horizon; the line runs as level as the shore line of a lake or
sea; indeed, a warmer aerial sea fills all the valleys, sub-merging
the lower peaks, and making white islands of all the higher ones.
The branches bend with the rime. The winds have not shaken it down.
It adheres to them like a growth. On examination I find the
branches coated with ice, from which shoot slender spikes and
needles that penetrate and hold the cord of snow. It is a new kind
of foliage wrought by the frost and the clouds, and it obscures the
sky, and fills the vistas of the woods nearly as much as the myriad
leaves of summer. The sun blazes, the sky is without a cloud or a
film, yet we walk in a soft white shade. A gentle breeze was blowing
on the open crest of the mountain, but one could carry a lighted
candle through these snow-curtained and snow-canopied chambers. How
shall we see the fox if the hound drives him through this white
obscurity? But we listen in vain for the voice of the dog and press
on. Hares' tracks were numerous. Their great soft pads had left