In very hot and long summers, the ice-fields are denuded even in the higher regions, and then a much greater amount of blue-green glacier-ice glances down into the valley, many knobs and depressions are laid bare which one otherwise sees only covered with white, the muddy edge of the ice comes to view with its deposit of rocks, silt, and slime, and far greater volumes of water than usual rush into the valley.  This continues until it gradually becomes autumn again, the waters grow less, and one day a gray continuous gentle rain spreads over all the valley.  Then, after the mists have dispersed about the summits, the mountain is seen to have draped itself again in its soft robe of snow, and all crags, cones, and pinnacles are vested in white.  Thus it goes on, year after year, with but slight divergences, and thus it will go on so long as nature remains the same, and there is snow upon the heights and people live in the valleys.  But to the natives these changes seem great, they pay much attention to them and calculate the progress of the seasons by them.

The ascent of the mountain is made from our valley.  One follows a fine road which leads south to another valley over a so-called “neck.”  Neck they call a moderately high mountain-ridge which connects two mountain-ranges of considerable magnitude and over which one can pass from one valley to another between the mountains.  The neck which connects our snow-mountain with another great mountain-mass is altogether covered with pine-forests.  At its greatest elevation, where the road begins gradually to descend into the valley beyond, there stands a post erected to commemorate a calamity.  Once upon a time a baker carrying bread in a basket slung around his neck was found dead on that spot.  They painted a picture of the dead baker with his basket and the pine-trees round about, and beneath it an explanation with a request for prayer from the passer-by, and this picture they fastened to a wooden post painted red, and erected it at the spot where the accident occurred.  At this post, then, one leaves the road and continues along the ridge of the “neck” instead of crossing it and descending into the valley beyond.  There is an opening among the pine-trees at that spot, as if there were a road between them.  In fact, a path is sometimes made in that direction which then serves to bring down timber from the higher regions, but which is afterward overgrown again with grass.  Proceeding along this way, which gently ascends, one arrives at last at a bare, treeless region.  It is barren heath where grows nothing but heather, mosses, and lichens.  It grows ever steeper, the further one ascends; but one always follows a gully resembling a rounded out ditch which is convenient, as one cannot then miss one’s way in this extensive, treeless, monotonous region.  After a while, rocks as large as churches rise out of the grassy soil, between whose walls one climbs up still farther.  Then there are again bleak ridges, with hardly any