THE SNAIL AND THE ROSE-TREE 183




The Ice-Maiden.




I.

LITTLE RUDY.


Let us visit Switzerland and look around us in the glorious country of
mountains, where the forest rises out of steep rocky walls; let us
ascend to the dazzling snow-fields, and thence descend to the green
plains, where the rivulets and brooks hasten away, foaming up, as if
they feared not to vanish, as they reached the sea.

The sun beams upon the deep valley, it burns also upon the heavy
masses of snow; so that after the lapse of years, they melt into
shining ice-blocks, and become rolling avalanches and heaped-up
glaciers.

Two of these lie in the broad clefts of the rock, under the
Schreckhorn and Wetterhorn, near the little town of Grindelwald. They
are so remarkable that many strangers come to gaze at them, in the
summer time, from all parts of the world; they come over the high