t for and by the passage of
travelers. Meantime, the drizzling rain, which had commenced soon after
we started, had changed to a spitting, watery sleet, and at length to
snow, a little before we reached the summit of the pass, where we found
a young Nova Zembla. An extensive cloud-manufactory was in full blast
all around us, shutting out from view even the nearest cliffs, while the
snow and wind--I being on the outside and somewhat wet already--made our
short halt there anything but comfortable. The ground was covered with
snow to an average depth of two or three feet; the brooks ran over beds
of ice and under large heaps of drifted and frozen snow, and all was
sullen and cheerless. Here were the sources (in part) of the Po and of
the Rhine, but I was rather in haste to bid the former good-bye.

We reduced our three-horse establishment to two, and began to descend
the Rhineward zig-zags at a rattling pace, our driver (and all the
drivers) hurrying all the way. We reached the first village (where there
was considerable Grass again, and some Hemlock, but scarcely any
attempts at cultivation), in fifty minutes, and I think the distance was
nearly five miles. "Jehu, the son of Nimshi," could not have done the
distance in five minutes less.

We changed horses and drivers at this village, but proceeded at a
similar pace down through the most hideous chasm for the next two or
three miles that I ever saw. I doubt whether a night-mare ever beat it.
The descent of the stream must have been fully 1,500 feet to the mile
for a good part of this distance, while the mountains rose naked and
almost perpendicular on each side from its very bed to hights of one to
two thousand feet, without a shrub, and hardly a resting-place even for
snow. Down this chasm our road wound, first on one side of the rivulet,
then on the other, crossing by narrow stone bridges, often at the
sharpest angle with the road, making zig-zags wherever space could be
found or made for them, now passing through a tunnel cut through the
solid rock, and then under a long archway built over it to protect it
from avalanches at the crossing of a raving cataract down the mountain
side. And still the staving pace at which we started was kept up by
those on the lead, and imitated by the boy driving our carriage, which
was hindmost of all. I was just thinking that, though every one should
know his own business best, yet if _I_ were to drive down a steep
mountain in that way