I have related elsewhere my ascent through snow-drifts and snow-clouds—up rocky ravines and over mountain marshes—till I reached the Brocken House drowned with rain, a most woful-looking traveler. After drying beside a stove like a furnace, and a dinner which sent the blood warm and tingling through my limbs, I put the Brocken-nosegay of moss and lichens in my knapsack and passing the witches’ cauldron, took the path for Schierke. It led down the southern side of the mountain, and the Brocken host (Herr Nese, who for fifty years past has introduced his Spectre to poets, peasants, philosophers and princes) showed me a pile of rocks just under the summit, where a few weeks before, his dogs had found a handwerker buried in a snow-drift and on the point of perishing. A half-hour’s walk brought me below the region of snow, but not that of rain, for the clouds were gathered over the mountains to the right. As I reached the first forests they rolled up black and swift and the drops began to fall hard and heavily. Observing a little thicket of scrubby pines, I lay down on the ground and crawled under it, where I coiled myself up in the close and fragrant covert, just as the floodgates were opened. A perfect deluge succeeded; the trees roared and battled in the wind; the gullies on either side were full of foaming water and the air was nearly as dark as night. But scarcely a drop found its way through my shelter. I lay there warm and snug in the midst of a wild and dreary storm, and never shall I forget my exquisite sense of happiness while it lasted. Just before sunset I came out upon a slope of rich green pasture where several boys were tending a flock of cattle. The sky was then partially clear but cold, and as I was anxious to reach a village before dark, I left the road to ask them my nearest way. One question succeeded another, and having told them to what country I belonged, I must needs stay with them awhile and tell them about it. We sat on a rock and talked until the shadow of the opposite mountain fell over us, when I left them. They had friends in America, and one of them thought he might visit them when he grew older. They delayed me so long that the foot-path I had taken, through a deep and rocky hollow, was very gloomy, and in the dim light, almost fearful. Vast masses of rock clung to the side of the mountain, “Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour, Clings to the mass of life, yet clinging, leans; And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss In which it fears to fall;” over and through the crevices were twisted the bony roots of the pines, and down in the chasms I heard the foaming of the swollen streams. This is the path by which Faust and Mephistopheles ascended the Brocken, and the storm which heralded my descent into it reminded me of Goethe’s description: