Half an hour afterward they had reached the dark and awe-inspiring gap of Brixen; and the united Bavarian and French troops marched with a measured step along the narrow road, on both sides of which rose steep gray rocks, covered here and there with small pine forests, and then again exhibiting their naked, moss-grown walls, crowned above with their snowy summits glistening like burnished silver in the morning sun. The column under General Bisson penetrated deeper and deeper into the gorge. Enormous rocks now closed the road in their front and rear. A profound, awful stillness surrounded them; only here and there they heard the rustling of a cascade falling down from the mountains with silvery spray, and flowing finally as a murmuring rivulet through the valley; now and then they heard also the hoarse croaking of some bird of prey soaring in the air, otherwise, all was still. General Bisson, who was riding in the middle of his column, turned smilingly to Lieutenant-Colonel Wreden "Did I not tell you, my dear Lieutenant-Colonel ," he said, "that these miserable peasants would take to their heels so soon as our column came in sight? They were, perhaps, able to cope with your few hundred men, but my four thousand men--" The loud crash of a rifle interrupted his sentence; a second, third, and fourth report followed in rapid succession. The heights seemed all at once to bristle with enemies. Like an enormous man-of-war, lying at first calm and peaceful, and then opening her port-holes, these gray rocks seemed suddenly to open all their port-holes and pour out death and destruction. From the rock in front yonder, from the steep mountains on both sides, from the precipitous hill jutting out in their rear and closing the gloomy gorge, rifle shots rattled down with unerring aim; every bullet hit its man, every bullet struck down a soldier in the ranks of the Bavarians and French; then were heard the triumphant cheers of the Tyrolese, who, for a moment, stepped forth from their safe hiding-places, danced on the rocks, jeered at the enemy with loud, scornful words, and disappeared again so quickly, that the bullets which the soldiers fired at them glanced harmlessly from the flanks of the rocks. But the Tyrolese fought not with their rifles alone against the enemy marching through the deep and awful gorge. Nature had prepared other means of defence for them; it had given them trees and rocks. They hurled the trees, which the storms had felled years ago, and which fragments of rock had held on the brink of the precipice, into the depth of the gorge; they detached large fragments from the rocks, and rolled them down on the soldiers, many of whom were crushed by these terrible missiles. And when these trees and rocks fell into the depth, and spread death and confusion in the ranks of the soldiers, the Tyrolese profited by this moment to aim and strike down additional victims by their rifle-bullets.