fields with spring flowers--primroses and oxlips, violets, anemones,
and bright blue squills. At Chur we slept, and early next morning
started for our homeward drive to Davos. Bad weather had declared
itself in the night. It blew violently, and the rain soon changed to
snow, frozen by a bitter north blast. Crossing the dreary heath of
Lenz was both magnificent and dreadful. By the time we reached Wiesen,
all the forests were laden with snow, the roads deep in snow-drifts,
the whole scene wintrier than it had been the winter through.

At Wiesen we should have stayed, for evening was fast setting in. But
in ordinary weather it is only a two hours drive from Wiesen to Davos.
Our coachman made no objections to resuming the journey, and our four
horses had but a light load to drag. So we telegraphed for supper to
be prepared, and started between five and six.

A deep gorge has to be traversed, where the torrent cleaves its way
between jaws of limestone precipices. The road is carried along ledges
and through tunnels in the rock. Avalanches, which sweep this passage
annually from the hills above, give it the name of Züge, or the
Snow-Paths. As we entered the gorge darkness fell, the horses dragged
more heavily, and it soon became evident that our Tyrolese driver was
hopelessly drunk. He nearly upset us twice by taking sharp turns in
the road, banged the carriage against telegraph posts and jutting
rocks, shaved the very verge of the torrent in places where there
was no parapet, and, what was worst of all, refused to leave his box
without a fight. The darkness by this time was all but total, and a
blinding snow-storm swept howling through the ravine. At length we
got the carriage to a dead-stop, and floundered out in deep wet
snow toward some wooden huts where miners in old days made their
habitation. The place, by a curious, perhaps unconscious irony, is