"What
makes them go there?" said we to our guides.
"_To be cool_" was the answer.
Hark! what's that? a sudden sound like the rush of a cascade.
"Avalanche! avalanche!" exclaimed the guide. And now, pouring down the
sides of the Wetterhorn, came a milk-white cascade, looking just like
any other cascade, melting gracefully over the rocks, and spreading,
like a stream of milk, on the soiled snow below.
This is a summer avalanche--a mere _bijou_--a fancy article, got
up, or rather got down, to entertain travellers. The winter avalanches
are quite other things. Witness a little further in our track, where
our guide stops us, and points to a place where all the pines have
been broken short off by one of them. Along here some old ghostly
pines, dead ages ago, their white, ghastly skeletons bleached by a
hundred storms, stand, stretching out their long, bony arms, like
phantom giants. These skeleton pines are a striking image; I wonder I
have not seen them introduced into pictures.
There, now, a little ahead, is a small hut, which marks the summit of
the grand Scheidich. Our horses come up to it, and we dismount.
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