We were now in a narrow valley, with steep mountains close upon either side of us. We scrambled a little way up the slope on our left, and found that the whole mountain side was becamped, and we secured a small level space for our fires, with difficulty. We scraped away the snow and made a fire, with wood, of which there was, fortunately, plenty, collected some clean snow for tea water, warmed some tinned food, and had supper. Except from snow, there was no water available during the next three days. No hay was procurable for the animals, and all we could give them to eat was dead beech leaves, which we unburied from the snow. We slept round the fire, and prevented ourselves from slipping down the mountain side, by logs of wood placed at our feet. The men, with their fires, and the horses and the oxen, were close to us. And then I noticed that not only was our own hillside ablaze with camp fires, but that the lights amongst the trees upon the mountain opposite, from which we were only divided by two hundred yards of valley, were also camp fires, and not, as I had fancied, stars. Where did camp fires end and stars begin? Were there still such things as stars? Or was heaven quite shut out by earth? There was only a small piece of sky visible between the towering and overhanging mountains, and, in the darkness, heaven and earth seemed merged in a huge amphitheatre which was outlined by myriads of flickering lights. During the precious moments just before sleep--the only moments, in these times, available for thought--stars and camp fires, earth and heaven, became hopelessly mixed. I couldn't sort them, and I went to sleep, convinced that stars were the camp fires of the heavenly host, which is now out in mortal combat against the hosts of evil on our earth. It took us, at first, a long time to pack the ponies, but we were away by dawn (Monday, December 6th), climbing up the mountain, through the fir trees, over slippery ice, and rocks which were half hidden in snow. There was no longer a defined way; the whole earth was now an untrodden track, from or to perdition. Whichever way you looked, oxen, horses, and human beings were struggling, and rolling, and stumbling, all day long, in ice and snow. Soon after we started, I saw a long column ascending a steep hillside; near the top, a horse slipped, and knocked down the man who was leading it; they both fell, and as they rolled down the slope, they knocked down all the other men and horses in the line, and these all fell like ninepins, one after the other, all the way down the mountain side.