while it is actually at work); and the counter
currents that here swept upward in a slanting direction had bitten
out the softer layers, leaving a fine network of little ridges which
reminded strangely of the delicate fretwork-tracery in wind-sculptured
rock--as I had seen it in the Black Hills in South Dakota. This piece of
work of the wind is exceedingly short-lived in snow, and it must not be
confounded with the honeycombed appearance of those faces of snow cliffs
which are "rotting" by reason of their exposure to the heat of the
noonday sun. These latter are coarse, often dirty, and nearly always
have something bristling about them which is entirely absent in the
sculptures of the wind. The under side of the roof in the cavity looked
very much as a very stiff or viscid treacle would look when spread over
a meshy surface, as, for instance, over a closely woven netting of wire.
The stems and the branches of the brush took the place of the wire, and
in their meshes the snow had been pressed through by its own weight, but
held together by its curious ductility or tensile strength of which I
was to find further evidence soon enough. It thus formed innumerable,
blunted little stalactites, but without the corresponding stalagmites
which you find in limestone caves or on the north side of buildings when
the snow from the roof thaws and forms icicles and slender cones of ice
growing up to meet them from the ground where the trickling drops fall
and freeze again.

By the help of these various tokens I had picked my next resting place
before we started up again. It was on this second dash that I understood
why those Homeric words had come to my lips a while ago. This was indeed
like nothing so much as like being out on rough waters and in a troubled
sea, with nothing to brace the storm with but a wind-tossed nutshell
of a one-man sailing craft. I knew that experience for having outridden
many a gale in the mouth of the mighty St. Lawrence River. When the snow
reached its extreme in depth, it gave you the feeling which a drowning
man may have when fighting his desperate fight with the salty waves. But
more impressive than that was the frequent outer resemblance. The waves
of the ocean rise up and reach out and batter against the rocks and
battlements of the shore, retreating again and ever returning to the
assault, covering the obstacles thrown in the way of their progress with
thin sheets of licking tongues at least. And if su