Oh! those screes--those screes! lying at an angle of goodness knows how much with the horizon--sharp, slaty, angular pieces of stone, like savage hatchets, slippery as glass, glancing from under our feet, and casting us down sideways on their abominable edges, "sliddering" down by the ton, carrying our unfortunate persons yards below where we wanted to go, crashing and clattering, and then dancing and bounding far down into the valley, like mischievous gnomes, delighted with the bumpings and bruisings they had treated us to! How Joseph did anathematize! For my part, mine was a grief "too deep for swears!" After crossing, still ascending, two or three beds of screes, we came to the edge of the first snow-field; not very broad, it is true, but lying at a higher angle than I ever thought possible, and frozen as hard as marble on the surface--one sheet of ice, with an agreeable fall of some hundred feet at its lower edge. We were in despair! We had now got excited and confident--our "blood was up;" and here came "the impossible to stop us." "But what is it that Joseph has picked up from the snow, and is examining so carefully?" "No matter--'twas not what we sought," but it _was_ something closely connected with it. "Yes, there is no doubt of it; they have been here, and lately too! See the sharp hoof-prints just above! They must have crossed this morning! Go it, ye cripples (_in prospectu_), we must cross this, come what may." We got along steadily, without any slides, though with many slips, always sticking our staves convulsively into the snow the moment our heels seemed to have the slightest disposition to assume the altitude of our heads. It was nervous work--one slip, one moment too late in thrusting our staff perpendicularly in the snow, as an anchor, and away we should have shot like a meteor over the glittering surface for a hundred terrible yards, and then with a wild bound have been launched into the abyss below. However, we could not have turned back if we had wished it, and at last, to our intense satisfaction, we grasped the rough rock that bounded the further side of the field. Grasped it!--we embraced it!--we clung to its rough surface as if we had been six months at sea, and had landed in the Hesperides! At length on the summit of the ridge, we were able to crouch down and look through a crack in the rock into the next valley. Round and about, above and below, we examined every hole and corner; half-a-dozen times some villanous stone made our hearts leap to our mouths. But alas! "it was no go;" there was not a living thing in sight--barrenness, barrenness, and desolation. Our chance of chamois was utterly over for the day. _N'importe._ Better luck to-morrow. Who can feel out of spirits in that brisk mountain atmosphere? There is the highest peak of the Wildgrad Kögle right before us--and hang him, we'll dine on his head.