ngerberg at Innsbruck. It is the
half-hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn--_still
wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer_--begins to glow with mauves and apple
greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy
mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the
world, there are touches of piercing primary colours--red, yellow,
violet--the palette of a synchromist. Far below, hugging the winding
river, lies little Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and Christmas
garden villas. A battalion of Austrian soldiers, drilling in the
Exerzierplatz, appears as an army of grey ants, now barely visible.
Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad flank of the Hungerberg, the
night train for Venice labours toward the town.

It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all
Europe. It has colour, dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a bit
and so increase their spell. They are not the harsh precipices of
Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of Northern Italy, but
rolling billows of clouds and snow, the high-flung waves of some titanic
but stricken ocean. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from the
funicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the trees
of the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is only
a sheep bell) is heard from afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon,
sweeps across the crystal spaces.

Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside, and the hand of man
has converted it into a terrace. To the rear, clinging to the mountain,
is an Alpine _gasthaus_--a bit overdone, perhaps, with its red-framed
windows and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of the Alps. Along
the front of the terrace, protecting sightseers from the sheer drop of a
thousand feet, is a stout wooden rail.

A man in an American sack suit, with a bowler hat on his head, lounges
against this rail. His elbows rest upon it, his legs are crossed in the
fashion of a figure four, and his face is buried in the red book of Herr
Baedeker. It is the volume on Southern Germany, and he is reading the
list of Munich hotels. Now and then he stops to mark one with a pencil,
which he wets at his lips each time. While he is thus engaged, another
man comes ambling along the terrace, apparently from the direction of
the funicular railway station. He, too, carries a red book. It is
Baedeker on Austria-Hungary. After gaping around him a b