onder whether it is a
land or a sullen bar of black cloud.

All the world knows how snow, even in mere gullies and streaks, uplifts
a mountain. Well, I have seen the dull roof-tile of the Margeride from
above Puy in spring, when patches of snow still clung to it, and the
snow did no more than it would have done to a plain. It neither raised
nor distinguished this brooding thing.

But it is indeed a barrier. Its rounded top is more formidable than if
it were a ridge of rock; its saddle, broad and indeterminate, deceives
the traveller, with new slight slopes following one upon the other when
the sharp first of the ascent is done.

Already the last edge of the Causse beyond the valley had disappeared,
and already had the great road taken me higher than the buttress which
holds up that table-land, when, thinking I had gained the summit, I
turned a corner in the way and found a vague roll of rising land before
me. Upon this also, under the strong moonlight, I saw the ruin of a
mill. Water, therefore, must have risen behind it. I expected and found
yet another uncertain height, and beyond it a third, and, a mile beyond,
another. This summit was like those random marshy steps which rise
continually and wearily between the sluggish rivers of the prairies.

I passed the fields that gave his title to La Peyrouse. The cold, which
with every hundred feet had increased unnoticed, now first disturbed me.
The wind had risen (for I had come to that last stretch of the glacis,
over which, from beyond the final height, an eastern wind can blow), and
this wind carried I know not what dust of ice, that did not make a
perceptible fall, yet in an hour covered my clothes with tiny spangles,
and stung upon the face like Highland snow in a gale. With that wind and
that fine, powdery frost went no apparent clouds. The sky was still
clear above me. Such rare stars as can conquer the full moon shone
palely; but round the moon herself bent an evanescent halo, like those
one sees over the Channel upon clear nights before a stormy morning. The
spindrift of fine ice had, I think, defined this halo.

How long I climbed through the night I do not know. The summit was but a
slight accident upon a tumbled plain. The ponds stood thick with ice,
the sound of running water had ceased, when the slight downward of the
road through a barren moor and past broad undrained films of frozen bog,
told me that I was on the further northern slope. The wind also was