I followed the water-ditch around every projection of the mountain, still ascending higher amid the same wild scenery, till at length I reached the Oderteich, a great dam, in a kind of valley formed by some mountain peaks on the side of the Brocken.  It has a breastwork of granite, very firm, and furnishes a continual supply of water for the works.  It began to rain soon, and I took a foot-path which went winding up through the pine wood.  The storm still increased, till everything was cloud and rain, so I was obliged to stop about five o’clock at Oderbruch, a toll-house and tavern on the side of the Brocken, on the boundary between Brunswick and Hanover—­the second highest inhabited house in the Hartz.  The Brocken was invisible through the storm and the weather forboded a difficult ascent.  The night was cold, but by a warm fire I let the winds howl and the rain beat.  When I awoke the next morning, we were in clouds.  They were thick on every side, hiding what little view there was through the openings of the forest.  After breakfast, however, they were somewhat thinner, and I concluded to start for the Brocken.  It is not the usual way for travellers who ascend, being not only a bad road but difficult to find, as I soon discovered.  The clouds gathered around again after I set out, and I was obliged to walk in a storm of mingled rain and snow.  The snow lay several feet deep in the forests, and the path was, in many places, quite drifted over.  The white cloud-masses were whirled past by the wind, continually enveloping me and shutting out every view.  During the winter the path had become, in ninny places, the bed of a mountain torrent, so that I was obliged sometimes to wade kneedeep in snow, and sometimes to walk over the wet, spongy moss, crawling under the long, dripping branches of the stunted pines.  After a long time of such dreary travelling, I came to two rocks called the Stag Horns, standing on a little peak.  The storm, now all snow, blew more violently than ever, and the path became lost under the deep drifts.

Comforting myself with the assurance that if I could not find it, I could at least make my way back, I began searching, and after some time, came upon it again.  Here the forest ceased; the way led on large stones over a marshy ascending plain, but what was above, or on either side, I could not see.  It was solitude of the most awful kind.  There was nothing but the storm, which had already wet me through, and the bleak gray waste of rocks.  It grew sleeper and steeper; I could barely trace the path by the rocks which were worn, and the snow threatened soon to cover these.  Added to this, although the walking and fresh mountain air had removed my illness, I was still weak from the effects of it, and the consequences of a much longer exposure to the storm were greatly to be feared.  I was wondering if the wind increased at the same rate, how much longer it would be before I should be carried off, when suddenly