but
gradually the fine tall trees dwindled into dwarfs, chilled to the
heart by the silent, pitiless cold. Others battled bravely with the
bowling winds, which have stripped them bare on one side, while they
seem to toss out their arms wildly on the other, imploring protection
and aid from the valley-dwellers below. Up and up, and you come
suddenly upon the "Silver Forest," a grove of dead white trees, naked
of leaf and fruit and bud, bare of color, dry of sap and juice and
life, retaining only their form,--cold set outline of their hale and
hearty vigor; a skeleton plantation, bleaching in the frosty sun, yet
mindful of its past existence, sturdy, and defiant of the woodman's
axe; a frostwork mimicry of nature, a phantom forest. On and on,
turning to overlook the path you have trodden, at every retrospect the
struggle between life and death becomes more and more palpable. The
Destroyer has hurled his winds, his frosts, his fires; and gray wastes,
broken wastes, black wastes, attest with what signal power. But life
follows closely, planting his seeds in the very footprints of death.
Where blankness and bleakness seem to reign, a tiny life springs in
mosses, rich with promise of better things. Long forked tongues of
green are lapping up the dreary wastes, and will presently overpower
them with its vivid tints. Even amid the blanched petrifaction of the
Silver Grove fresh growths are creeping, and the day is not far distant
that shall see those pale statues overtopped, submerged, lost in an
emerald sea. Even among the rocks, the strife rages. Some mysterious
principle inheres in the insensate rock, whose loss makes this
crumbling, discolored, inert debris. Up you go, up and up, and life
dies out. Chaos and ruin reign supreme. Headlong steeps yawn beside
your path, losing their depths in darkness. Great fragments of rock
cover all the ground, lie heaped, pile upon pile, jagged, gray, tilted
into a thousand sharp angles, refusing a foothold, or offering it
treacherously. Wild work has been here; and these gigantic wrecks bear
silent witness of the uproar. It seems but a pause, not a peace.
Agiocochook, Great Mountain of Spirits, rendezvous of departed souls,
clothed with the strength and fired with the passions of the gods,--in
what caverns under the cliffs do the wearied Titans rest? From what
dungeons of gloom emerging shall they renew their elemental strife?
What shall be the sign of their awaking to darken