If my
horse is going to throw me any where, I wish it may be here: it is not
so bad a thing to roll down into that hay. But now we mount higher;
the breezy dells, enamelled with flowers and grass, become fewer; the
great black pines take their place. Right before us, in the purest
white, as a bride adorned for her husband, rises the beautiful
Jungfrau, wearing on her forehead the Silver Horn, and the Snow Horn.
The Silver Horn is a peak, dazzlingly bright, of snow; and its crest
is now seen in relief against a sky of the deepest blue. See, also,
how those dark pines of the foreground contrast with it, like the
stern, mournful realities of life seen against the dazzling hopes of
heaven.
There is something celestial in these mountains. You might think such
a vision as that to be a bright footstool of Heaven, from which the
next step would be into an unknown world. The pines here begin to show
that long white beard of moss which I admire so much in Maine. Now, we
go right up over their heads. There, the tall pines are under our
feet. A little more--and now above us rise the stern, naked rocks,
where only the chamois and the wild goat live.
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