130

HOURS OF EXERCISE IN THE ALPS. {1861

XII.

THE OLD WEISSTHOR.

I was called by my host at a quarter before three.The firmament of Monte Rosa was almost as blackas the rocks beneath it, while above in the darknesstrembled the stars. At 4 a.m. we quitted the hotel.We wound along the meadows, by the slumberinghouses, and the unslumbering river. The easternheaven soon brightened, and we could look directthrough the gloom of the valley at the opening ofthe dawn. We threaded our way amid the boulderswhich the torrent had scattered over the plain, andamong which groups of stately pines now findanchorage. Some of the trees had exerted all theirforce in a vertical direction, and rose straight, tall,and mastlike, without lateral branches. We reacheda great moraine, grey with years, and clothed withmagnificent pines ; our way lay up it, and from thetop we dropped into a little dell of magical beauty.Deep hidden by the glacier-built ridges, guarded bynoble trees, soft and green at the bottom, and tuftedround with bilberry bushes, through which peepedhere and there the lichen-covered crags, I have