A long straight reach of valley, wall-like mountains upon either
hand that rise higher and higher and shoot up new summits the
higher you climb; a few noble peaks seen even from the valley; a
village of hotels; a world of black and white--black pine-woods,
clinging to the sides of the valley, and white snow flouring it,
and papering it between the pine-woods, and covering all the
mountains with a dazzling curd; add a few score invalids marching
to and fro upon the snowy road, or skating on the ice-rinks,
possibly to music, or sitting under sunshades by the door of the
hotel--and you have the larger features of a mountain sanatorium.
A certain furious river runs curving down the valley; its pace
never varies, it has not a pool for as far as you can follow it;
and its unchanging, senseless hurry is strangely tedious to
witness. It is a river that a man could grow to hate. Day after
day breaks with the rarest gold upon the mountain spires, and
creeps, growing and glowing, down into the valley. From end to end
the snow reverberates the sunshine; from end to end the air tingles
with the light, clear and dry like crystal. Only along the course
of the river, but high above it, there hangs far into the noon, one
waving scarf of vapour. It were hard to fancy a more engaging
feature in a landscape; perhaps it is harder to believe that
delicate, long-lasting phantom of the atmosphere, a creature of the
incontinent stream whose course it follows.
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