From the Hochspitz of the Fluela the track plunges at one bound into the valley of the Inn, following a narrow cornice carved from the smooth bank of snow, and hung, without break or barrier, a thousand feet or more above the torrent.  The summer road is lost in snow-drifts.  The galleries built as a protection from avalanches, which sweep in rivers from those grim, bare fells above, are blocked with snow.  Their useless arches yawn, as we glide over or outside them, by paths which instinct in our horse and driver traces.  As a fly may creep along a house-roof, slanting downwards we descend.  One whisk from the swinged tail of an avalanche would hurl us, like a fly, into the ruin of the gaping gorge.  But this season little snow has fallen on the higher hills; and what still lies there, is hard frozen.  Therefore we have no fear, as we whirl fast and faster from the snow-fields into the black forests of gnarled cembras and wind-wearied pines.  Then Suess is reached, where the Inn hurries its shallow waters clogged with ice-floes through a sleepy hamlet.  The stream is pure and green; for the fountains of the glaciers are locked by winter frosts; and only clear rills from perennial sources swell its tide.  At Suess we lost the sun, and toiled in garish gloom and silence, nipped by the ever-deepening cold of evening, upwards for four hours to Samaden.

The next day was spent in visiting the winter colony at San Moritz, where the Kulm Hotel, tenanted by some twenty guests, presented in its vastness the appearance of a country-house.  One of the prettiest spots in the world is the ice-rink, fashioned by the skill of Herr Caspar Badrutt on a high raised terrace, commanding the valley of the Inn and the ponderous bulwarks of Bernina.  The silhouettes of skaters, defined against that landscape of pure white, passed to and fro beneath a cloudless sky.  Ladies sat and worked or read on seats upon the ice.  Not a breath of wind was astir, and warm beneficent sunlight flooded the immeasurable air.  Only, as the day declined, some iridescent films overspread the west; and just above Maloja the apparition of a mock sun—­a well-defined circle of opaline light, broken at regular intervals by four globes—­seemed to portend a change of weather.  This forecast fortunately proved delusive.  We drove back to Samaden across the silent snow, enjoying those delicate tints of rose and violet and saffron which shed enchantment for one hour over the white monotony of Alpine winter.

At half-past eight next morning, the sun was rising from behind Pitz Languard, as we crossed the Inn and drove through Pontresina in the glorious light, with all its huge hotels quite empty and none but a few country-folk abroad.  Those who only know the Engadine in summer have little conception of its beauty.  Winter softens the hard details of bare rock, and rounds the melancholy grassless mountain flanks, suspending icicles to every ledge and spangling the curved surfaces