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The southern island, which is the larger, also has its natural attractions, but they are of a different kind; chief of all is the grand range of mountains called, not inappropriately, the "Southern Alps," vying with its European representative in the loftiness of its peaks and the splendour of its snowfields and glaciers, but formed of more ancient and solid rocks than those of the northern island.
It was warm inside the compartments and the air made a thick steam on the windows, hiding the snowfields and the station as the train rushed thundering past. In one of the third-class compartments two gypsies sat together with their heads close to the window, peering out. "Half an hour now, Velasco." "Twenty-two minutes, Kaya." "Now, only twelve." "Are the passports ready, Velasco?"
It is true, the glaciers and snowfields are limited; the waterfalls are comparatively few and slender, and the rivers small; the loftiest peaks are little more than ten thousand feet high. But, on the other hand, the mountains are always near, and therefore always imposing.
When one penetrates Switzerland by the green pine-clad valleys, passing through and beneath those delicious upland villages, each clustering round a church with a glittering cupola, the wooden houses with their brown fronts, their big eaves, perched up aloft at such pleasant angles, one thinks of Switzerland as an inhabited land of valleys, with screens and backgrounds of peaks and snowfields; but when one goes up higher still, and gets up to the top of one of the peaks, one sees that Switzerland is really a region of barren ridges, millions of acres of cold stones and ice, with a few little green cracks among the mountain bases, where men have crept to live; and that man is only tolerated there.
And the wind of the evening descending cool from the snowfields of some mountainous abode of distant gods came suddenly, like glad tidings to an anxious city, into the wing-like sails. And so we came into the central stream, whereat the sailors lowered the greater sails.
But he knew the Susitna country; he kept a true course, and sometimes, in swampy places, turned back to the main thoroughfare. At last, near the crossing of the Matanuska, I was caught in the first spring thaw. It was heavy going. All the streams were out of banks; the valley became a network of small sloughs undermining the snowfields, creating innumerable ponds and lakes.
The snowfields melt into mud and within days a jungle stretches high into the air. Everything grows, swells, proliferates. Plants climb on top of plants, fighting for the life-energy of the sun. Everything is eat and be eaten, grow and thrive in that short season. Because when the first snow of winter falls again, ninety per cent of the year must pass until the next coming of warmth.
Such forest-tracts, as lie well into the interior gorges of the mountains, and where the lumberer's axe never sounds in his ears, are the winter haunts of the Pyrenean bear; while in summer he roams to a higher elevation along the lower edge of the snowfields and glaciers, where he finds the roots and bulbs of many Alpine plants, and even lichens, congenial to his taste.
Upon the higher declivities and summits, snowfields and glaciers abound, as in the Alps; and even in some of the passes these phenomena are encountered. Most of the passes are higher than those of the Alps; but in consequence of the greater elevation of the snow-line, they remain open throughout the winter.
I see I must bring them to reason. Let me think let me think." He was still thinking when the sun set. Nunez had an eye for all beautiful things, and it seemed to him that the glow upon the snowfields and glaciers that rose about the valley on every side was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
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