by a sharp crestline that bounded an
hemispherical, crater-like hollow. When steam bubbles up through thick
porridge, in its leisurely and impeded way, and the bubble bursts with
a clucking sound, then for a moment a crater is formed just like these
circular holes; only here in the snow they were on a much larger scale,
of course, some of them six to ten feet in diameter.

And again the snow was thrown up into a bulwark, twenty and more feet
high, with that always repeating cliff face to the south, resembling a
miniature Gibraltar, with many smaller ones of most curiously similar
form on its back: bulwarks upon bulwarks, all lowering to the south. In
these the aggressive nature of storm-flung snow was most apparent. They
were formidable structures; formidable and intimidating, more through
the suggestiveness of their shape than through mere size.

I came to places where the wind had had its moments of frolicksome
humour, where it had made grim fun of its own massive and cumbersome
and yet so pliable and elastic majesty. It had turned around and around,
running with breathless speed, with its tongue lolling out, as it were,
and probably yapping and snapping in mocking mimicry of a pup trying to
catch its tail; and it had scooped out a spiral trough with overhanging
rim. I felt sorry that I had not been there to watch it, because after
all, what I saw, was only the dead record of something that had been
very much alive and vociferatingly noisy. And in another place it had
reared and raised its head like a boa constrictor, ready to strike at
its prey; up to the flashing, forked tongue it was there. But one spot
I remember, where it looked exactly as if quite consciously it had
attempted the outright ludicrous: it had thrown up the snow into the
semblance of some formidable animal--more like a gorilla than anything
else it looked, a gorilla that stands on its four hands and raises every
hair on its back and snarls in order to frighten that which it is afraid
of itself--a leopard maybe.

And then I reached the "White Range Line House." Curiously enough, there
it stood, sheltered by its majestic bluff to the north, as peaceful
looking as if there were no such a thing as that record, which I had
crossed, of the uproar and fury of one of the forces of Nature engaged
in an orgy. And it looked so empty, too, and so deserted, with never
a wisp of smoke curling from its flue-pipe, that for a moment I was
tempted to turn in and s