for one to have come up here from the lower country,"
remarked Karl, reflectively.

"But how could he get into the valley?" again inquired Caspar.

"In the same way as we got in ourselves," was Karl's reply; "up the
glacier and through the gorge."

"But the crevasse that hinders us from getting out? You forget that,
brother? An elephant could no more cross it than he could fly; surely
not?"

"Surely not," rejoined Karl. "I did not say that he could have crossed
the crevasse."

"Oh! you mean that he may have come up here before we did?"

"Exactly so. If it be an elephant we have seen--and what else can it
be?" pursued Karl, no longer yielding to a belief in the supernatural
character of their nocturnal visitant--"it must of course have got into
the valley before us. The wonder is our having seen no signs of such an
animal before. You, Caspar, have been about more than any of us. Did
you never, in your rambles, observe anything like an elephant's track?"

"Never. It never occurred to me to look for such a thing. Who would
have thought of a great elephant having climbed up here? One would
fancy such unwieldy creatures quite incapable of ascending a mountain."

"Ah! there you would be in error: for, singular as it may appear, the
elephant is a wonderful climber, and can make his way almost anywhere
that a man can go. It is a fact, that in the island of Ceylon the wild
elephants are often found upon the top of Adam's Peak--to scale which is
trying to the nerves of the stoutest travellers. It would not be
surprising to find one here. Rather, I may say, it _is_ not: for now I
feel certain what we have just seen is an elephant, since it can be
nothing else. He may have entered this valley before us--by straying up
the glacier as we did, and crossing the chasm by the rock bridge--which
I know he could have done as well as we. Or else," continued Karl, in
his endeavour to account for the presence of the huge creature, "he may
have come here long ago, even before there was any crevasse. What is
there improbable in his having been here many years--perhaps all his
life, and that may be a hundred years or more?"

"I thought," said Caspar, "that elephants were only found on the plains,
where the vegetation is tropical and luxuriant."

"That is another popular error," replied Karl. "So far from affecting
tropical plains, the elephant prefers to dwell high up on the mountains;
and whenever he has the opportun