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In process of time, indeed, they got clear of the mists altogether, and emerged on to the higher valleys of the Alps vast, sterile, the white snow-plains glittering in the sun, except where the rocks showed through in points of intense black. There were no longer any pines.
The day was magnificent, the sky cloudless, and resplendent as polished steel, and the mercury 31° below zero. The sun, scarcely more than the breadth of his disc above the horizon, shed a faint orange light over the broad, level snow-plains, and the bluish-white hemisphere of the Bothnian Gulf, visible beyond Torneå.
They already had accomplished the longer part of their journey, had passed the high ridges, had come to the snow-plains, they already saw the valley of their home, with its well-known wooden houses, and had now but to reach the summit of one of the great glaciers.
But I think if I had wings I should choose to be a house-swallow; and then, after I'd had my fill of wonders, I should come back to my familiar corner, and my house full of busy humdrum people, and fly low to warn them of rain, and wheel up high to show them it was good haying weather, and know what was going on in every room in the house, and every house in the village; and all the while I should be hugging my wonderful big secret the secret of snow-plains and burning deserts, and coral islands and buried cities and should put it all into my chatter under the eaves, that the people in the house were always too busy to stop and listen to and when winter came I'm sure I should hate to leave them, even to go back to my great Brazilian forests full of orchids and monkeys!"
The little mirror on our table showed him sitting there, watching every move we made. We laid down to rest, but sleep was impossible. Through the panelled transparent floor, I watched the country changing as we advanced; vegetation dwindling; the soil changing to rocky barrenness at the border of the Cold Country. And then the snow-plains, the mute frozen rivers of ice, the mountains.
We overhauled our gear on Thursday, May 18; and hauled our sledge to the lower edge of the snouted glacier. The vehicle proved heavy and cumbrous. We had to lift it empty over bare patches of rock along the shore, and I realized that it would be too heavy for three men to manage amid the snow-plains, glaciers, and peaks of the interior.
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