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The fur fort was a relic of ancient days, when the old-time traders of the North sent their legions of pelt hunters from the far limits of the northern ice-world to the sunny western slopes of the great American continent.
The steely blue Alpine sky fits around this marvel of pure whiteness as it towers through the opening cloud, and soars out of earth's range. What is this glory so remote yet impending over us? It is the Jungfrau, the incomparable virgin of the ice-world, who bares her snowy breast. She slowly parts her filmy veil, and, as we gaze, uncovers all her loveliness.
With the child they were successful, but not with the mother; so the old grandfather received his daughter's little son into his house an orphan, a little boy who laughed more than he cried; but it seemed as if laughter had left him in the cold ice-world into which he had fallen, where, as the Swiss peasants say, the souls of the lost are confined till the judgment-day.
The attempt was, therefore, made, and, after a couple of hours of pretty laborious work, accomplished. They found themselves on a pinnacle which overlooked a large portion of the ice-world around Mont Blanc. While standing there, one or two avalanches were observed, and the Professor pointed out that avalanches were not all of one character.
We lunch at a restaurant cut out as a cavern in the solid rock, and survey the wondrous scene. We are now at a height of 10,000 feet, and in the real frozen ice-world, hitherto accessible only to the young and vigorous.
The glorious vision passed away in a gradual, fading change through a thousand tones of color to pale yellow and white, and then the work of the ice-world went on again in everyday beauty.
Sudden rushing sounds as if of short-lived squalls, in the midst of which were crashes like the thunder of distant artillery began now to attract attention, and a feeling of awe crept into the hearts of those of the party who were strangers to the ice-world.
"Well?" he asked; and as he saw her face his thoughts were suddenly swept back to the morning when the beauty of the ice-world was for the first time vouchsafed to him. He seemed to recapture the fine emotion of that moment. Sylvia stood gazing with parted lips up that wide and level glacier to its rock-embattled head. The majestic silence of the place astounded her.
From that moment Susan's disbelief in her lady's knowledge changed into faith, and deepened into profound veneration. It was, however, only a slight glimpse that had been thus afforded of the ice-world by which they were surrounded.
So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to weep the leaves into their graves; to weep the seeds into their seed-beds, and weep the soil into the plains; to get the rich earth ready for the winter, and then creep northward to the ice-world, and there die. Weary, and still more weary, slowly and more slowly still, they will journey on far northward, across fast-chilling seas.
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