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For my own part, I seldom read my Alpine author when he goes out of his gymnastic way to express admiration for the scenery. It is usually a pumped-up admiration. I am inclined to say that it is unnatural. I am almost ready to go so far as to say that it is wholly out of place. In my own humble opinion, very little above the snow-line is truly beautiful.

The Kosogol is a huge Alpine lake, deep and cold, eighty-five miles in length and from ten to thirty in width. On the western shore live the Darkhat Soyots, who call it Hubsugul, the Mongols, Kosogol. Both the Soyots and Mongols consider this a terrible and sacred lake.

Overhead a golden eagle sailed with a small mammal in its talons; strange reddish-colored bumblebees busied themselves in a bunch of flowers growing in a crevice in the rocks at my feet. But my eye could discern no larger creatures in this Alpine pasture land; not only could I see no sheep or goats, but not a sign of my friend.

Sometimes they are overtaken by snowstorms while up in the mountains, and are unable to see their way, or to move either backwards or forwards, for whole hours together, while at other times they are forced to lie down flat on their stomachs and to cling with hand and foot to any friendly piece of projecting rock in order to avoid being blown down the precipices, or into the deep crevasses, by the terrible winds which without warning suddenly sweep through the Alpine gorges and valleys, with a force that can only be described as cyclonic.

But when we add to it that little word 'my, we rise to the wonderful thought that the creature can claim an individual relation to Him, and in some profound sense a possession there. The tiny mica flake claims kindred with the Alpine peak from which it fell. The poor, puny hand, that can grasp so little of the material and temporal, can grasp all of God that it needs.

There will be no lack of diversion in an Alpine sanatorium. The place is half English, to be sure, the local sheet appearing in double column, text and translation; but it still remains half German; and hence we have a band which is able to play, and a company of actors able, as you will be told, to act.

We have here two facts extremely important with regard to the present theory. The one of these respects the original formation of those alpine strata; the other the elevation of those strata from the bottom of the sea, and particularly the erection of those bodies, which had been formed horizontal, to their present state, which is that of being extremely inclined.

As the cavalcade passed beneath the arch of the great gate, the lively, spirit-stirring horn sounded a fare well air, to which custom had attached the signification of good wishes. It took the way towards the level of the Leman by means of a winding and picturesque bridle-path that led, among alpine meadows, groves, rocks, and hamlets, fairly to the water-side.

In many of these we dimly discovered accumulated snow at the bottom, and we observed that the Alpine roses which overhung the snow-holes were by far the deepest coloured and most beautiful we could find.

There was not for miles round that place so much as a slope like that of Ludgate Hill. And this was a slope like that of the Matterhorn. The whole street had lifted itself like a single wave, and yet every speck and detail of it was the same, and I saw in the high distance, as at the top of an Alpine pass, picked out in pink letters the name over my paper shop.