can under their home eaves. The men, who during their short season are employed as guides by travellers, busy themselves when the strangers have departed in carrying on their wine-trade with the Valtelline. Early in the morning men and horses start for the summit of the Bernina Pass, floundering through the deep snow, the good clever beasts sometimes moving steadily forward on their knees, when unable to keep their footing, till they reach the shelter of the hut which marks the highest ground, and here they meet the people from the southern valleys with their casks of wine. Three or four times a week the journey is made, the Engadiners returning with well-laden sleighs to the village.

Walther entered with proper spirit into our plans and wishes, promised us great enjoyment for the morrow, fine weather, and plenty of snow; two bergwagen were to be at the door at eight o'clock, and we went to sleep in a state of high contentment, to dream of wonderful adventures and successes. We were up early, and, breakfast over, started in full mountaineering costume, well prepared for whatever might befall us, with linsey or serge dresses arranged as riding-habits in case of need, boots stout and strong and rich in nails, our especial pride and boast, alpenstocks, coloured spectacles, veils, and linen masks, the "weisse Teufel " head-dresses now becoming well known to Swiss natives as another wonderful idiosyncrasy of the English. The men had provided two very small sledges, but we were as yet ignorant of how they could by any possibility be good at need. Walther had arranged for the regular post sledges to be ready for us when we reached the snow. The day was perfectly cloudless, the sky of the deepest blue, the marvellously beautiful range of the Bernina,-Piz Palü, Piz Bernina, Piz Morteratsch, and other mighty mountains-rising up in almost dazzling whiteness against the clear background of colour. The sun was pleasantly warm, even at that early hour, and there was fortunately very little wind; we were in the highest possible spirits, and prepared to find amusement out of everything; the horses even seemed to share our enjoyment, as they trotted on, tossing their heads to the merry music of their bells and the gay songs of the drivers. As the way grew steeper we were glad to walk and to get thoroughly warmed by exercise, before encountering a possible snow-bath higher up. The road is a new one, made about three years ago, but still liable to much injury from the avalanches, which have been unusually frequent during this year. In some places all the telegraph posts were destroyed, and a sad desolation marked the course of the snow,-uprooted trees and masses of stone and broken walls showing where it had passed.

We halted at the Bernina Wirthshaus, rather less than two hours from Pontresina, to order dinner to be ready on our return, and then climbed still higher; the snow lying thickly all around us, not even a tree or rock to be seen, nothing but a white wilderness, with soft blue shadows in the hollows of the hills; and solemnly marking our way like silent fingerposts of fate, the telegraph poles rose at regular intervals, struggling

up through the mass of snow, sometimes scarcely showing a few feet above the ground, though our road so far had been dug out and beaten hard, and the travelling was by no means bad: but suddenly it came to an end, winter reasserted itself, and the snow had it all its own way. We dismounted, fastened on with great care spectacles and masks, the men following our example, and arranging their veils and glasses, and then busying themselves in transferring the horses to the sledges, which were lying by the side of the road, fastening the seats from our bergwagen on to the slight wooden framework of the runners. We watched, meanwhile, with much amusement, a drove of small black pigs who were disporting themselves on the snow, being ignominiously captured by a leg or an ear, and tossed into a cart, where they subsided into a most uncomfortable heap, with shrieks guttural and expostulatory.

The sledges were soon prepared, and we mounted to our places, D. and E., under Walther's care, heading the procession. They were very well off, the guide having fastened the scat of his bergwagen bodily, by means of cords, to the runners, so that they had something to cling to besides each other. Mrs. C. and C. were not so fortunate, they being enthroned on a long box, sitting back to back, with a loose cross-board for the feet, and nothing particular to lay hold of. A few yards brought us to the place where a gang of labourers were at work cutting out the roadway; unfortunately they had begun laterally, and a great slice of hard snow was already gone, leaving only a narrow ledge or shelf, not wide enough for our carriages. But the peasants were good-natured, and willing to put their shoulders to the wheel; that is to say (having a strict regard to truth), they held up the runners on one side to prevent our toppling over; and that difficulty past, we dashed on in famous style. The workmen, with their veiled faces and goggle eyes, standing silently in the dismal trenches, looked like a troop of weird ghosts, who had somehow strayed from the Inferno, and were fated to dig their way down again into the darkness, while we mere earthly travellers passed on into higher air.

The horses rushed over the snow, and flung up the cold white masses into our faces, pelting us with snow-balls with their eager feet; a man stood behind each sledge balanced between the runners, and drove over our heads, with shout and song urging on the horses. Whenever we dared to turn our heads the sight was one never to be forgotten: C. and her companion, in an agony of terror and laughter, holding on by the strength of a fixed determination, and looking out despairingly for side jolts which might upset their equilibrium. A joyful shout reached us, and Mrs. C. announced that she had found a rope to hold by, and was very comfortable: a short-lived happiness, as the next moment she discovered she had been clinging to her own crinoline, from which no difficulties of the way had ever separated her.

We went on and on, the only moving things in that beautiful still snow world, except one little marmot, who raced away in the distance,

uttering his shrill cry; a lake lay near us, but so covered over that only here and there a green glimmer of ice was to be seen. The mountains were entirely veiled, the great gallery on the Italian side was roofed with snow, which was piled up within and about it. Here our expedition ended, as we did not wish to give our poor horses a toilsome ascent; so dismounting, we walked down the hill, and plunged into the soft bank beside the road, gaining the entrance to the first arches in order to sce the immense icicles that fringed them, and then prepared to return in different order, D. being anxious to try her power of keeping her place on the wooden box. The pace was glorious, and it was the greatest possible fun to spin along through the snow-great hard masses balling under us, and throwing sledge, and scat, and travellers suddenly from side to side, as we dashed round corners, half blinded by the dazzling brightness; the cold and the speed at which we went taking away our breath with almost a terror of delight. Writing now in a warm quiet English home, such raptures sound too foolish to repeat, but our enjoyment was ecstatic while it lasted, our sensations so entirely new, except in so far as old childish dreams came back of wonderful Siberian journeys, and tales of adventure with dogs and reindeer. And then it was our own escapade, and had not been "cut and dried," and arranged for us by the powers that be! There had not been such a season for thirty years, and there might never be another when such an expedition could be made in June. Of course, there could never be another; of that we felt quite sure, and we laughed in our content, like a rabid connoisseur who hugs himself in silent delight over the contemplation of a rare engraving, knowing that the plate has been destroyed.

Our day was unique,-a beautiful completeness, which could only live again in our memories.

And then there was the dinner. Other people may come to that little inn, and may dine there, but not with such appetites as ours. And again fortune favoured us; there had been a wedding on the Sunday, and the remains of the feast graced the board. In romantic descriptions of the highest class it is inadmissible to speak of a table simply as such; whatever may be the number of its legs, whether it be round or square or oblong, it invariably becomes a board and generally groans; and this practice probably originated the first idea of mahogany as a spiritual habitat; it may to many minds afford a triumphant refutation of the notions of idle cavillers who profess to regard the legends of Tintagel as vague myths, that the knights of King Arthur invariably met at a table, the use of that simple word conveying a sense of remote antiquity, and a quaint rudeness of expression, bearing, by all rules of criticism, a genuine stamp of truth that must be perfectly irresistible! Fancy an erection of spun sugar and a bouquet of roses in a little wainscoted salon, through the windows of which we looked out on nothing but the same dream of snow. That sugar temple and the flowers added the element of poetry

to the adventure which was lacking in our prosaic and realistic minds. We grew sentimental with the good Wirthin over their festivities, and rested and talked and fraternized with the bright-faced domestics, examined the kitchen, and saw that our men were well cared for; and then, just as a lazy content was stealing over us, and even a somnolent tendency had manifested itself in Mrs. C., we were summoned by Walther and his companion, who carried the small sledges slung by ropes over their shoulders. These are less than a yard long, and about eighteen inches in width, and are formed of small transverse pieces of wood, attached to iron runners, the rope being fastened to the front.

The men walked up a steep slope of snow, and we plodded after

them, with many stumbles in the soft mass. At last, landed on a piece of stone which offered sure footing, we prepared to start. Seating ourselves on the sledges, with our feet extended, we steered ourselves, and by a

vigorous dig with our heels could come to a stop at pleasure. At first, the men took the ropes and ran with us, but the sensation was horrible of being dragged into infinite space, with nothing earthly to hold to, but crumbling or melting snow. When, however, we took the reins into our own hands the whole thing was different, and became an indescribable pleasure a swift shooting through the air without sense of obstruction. I began to realize what a fine time, if they were only sentient, the arrows would have belonging to an archery club, where the members were not clever enough to hit anything. But that was the difficulty, the one flaw in the perfect enjoyment of our performance; there was an end to it.

As a Frenchman once graphically remarked:-"Dans une chute il y a deux moments terribles: le départ et l'arrivée. Le voyage en luimême n'est rien. On cite même un maçon qui, tombant d'une cinquièmo étage, adressait au ciel, pendant la traversée, cette fervente prière: Mon Dieu, pourvu que ça dure !'"

The sun had considerable power, and it was hard work to struggle up to the starting-post, marked by an alpenstock, preparatory to each fresh glissade. At last, fairly exhausted, E. took refuge with Mrs. C., who had camped out on a damp piece of grass, a wholesome dread of wet feet having made all our descriptions of delight fall heedlessly on her ears. For a few minutes longer D. and C. ran races against each other, a sudden unlucky turn of the foot bringing up now one, now the other, as a very bad second, in a snow-drift, while the winner was often precipitated most ingloriously into the cold soft mass at the bottom of the slope.

The hours had passed so pleasantly that we hardly realized how rapidly the shadows were lengthening, till the bergwagen were announced to be ready, and it was time to turn our faces homewards. Contented and weary, we were glad to find ourselves once more rattling down the road, and we reached our old quarters as a golden glow passing over the tops of the fir-trees, and shining through the tufts and branches of the great Arolla pines, left the earth in a cold, frosty twilight, settled down for a moment like a veil of light over the higher mountains, and then faded slowly into the pale clear greenness of the evening sky.

We spent more than ten days at Pontresina, the pleasantest possible headquarters for mountaineers or for ladies. The valley is at an elevation of nearly six thousand feet, and the air is deliciously fresh and bracing, even in July; and early as we were there, with sunshine and fine weather, the cold was very bearable and wonderfully invigorating. The history of each day would fill a long paper, and cannot be given here. A morning on the Morteratsch glacier, was among our pleasantest expeditions; the ice was in good order, comfortably crumbly on the surface, and affording us plenty of foothold. You may walk for miles over this great sea of dirty ice, which is anything but beautiful, as there are none of the