A deep gorge has to be traversed, where the torrent cleaves its way between jaws of limestone precipices.  The road is carried along ledges and through tunnels in the rock.  Avalanches, which sweep this passage annually from the hills above, give it the name of Zuege, or the Snow-Paths.  As we entered the gorge darkness fell, the horses dragged more heavily, and it soon became evident that our Tyrolese driver was hopelessly drunk.  He nearly upset us twice by taking sharp turns in the road, banged the carriage against telegraph posts and jutting rocks, shaved the very verge of the torrent in places where there was no parapet, and, what was worst of all, refused to leave his box without a fight.  The darkness by this time was all but total, and a blinding snow-storm swept howling through the ravine.  At length we got the carriage to a dead-stop, and floundered out in deep wet snow toward some wooden huts where miners in old days made their habitation.  The place, by a curious, perhaps unconscious irony, is called Hoffnungsau, or the Meadow of Hope.  Indeed, it is not ill named; for many wanderers, escaping, as we did, from the dreadful gorge of Avalanches on a stormy night, may have felt, as we now felt, their hope reviving when they reached this shelter.

There was no light; nothing above, beneath, around, on any side, but tearing tempest and snow whirled through the ravine.  The horses were taken out of the carriage; on their way to the stable, which fortunately in these mountain regions will be always found beside the poorest habitation, one of them fell back across a wall and nearly broke his spine.  Hoffnungsau is inhabited all through the year.  In its dismal dark kitchen we found a knot of workmen gathered together, and heard there were two horses on the premises besides our own.  It then occurred to us that we might accomplish the rest of the journey with such sledges as they bring the wood on from the hills in winter, if coal-boxes or boxes of any sort could be provided.  These should be lashed to the sledges and filled with hay.  We were only four persons; my wife and a friend should go in one, myself and my little girl in the other.  No sooner thought of than put into practice.  These original conveyances were improvised, and after two hours’ halt on the Meadow of Hope, we all set forth again at half-past eight.

I have rarely felt anything more piercing than the grim cold of that journey.  We crawled at a foot’s pace through changeful snow-drifts.  The road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness.  My little girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white covering of snow above her.  Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen masses to our faces, lashed by a wind so fierce and keen that it was difficult to breathe it.  My forehead-bone ached, as though with neuralgia, from the mere mask of icy snow upon it, plastered on with frost.  Nothing could be seen but millions of white specks, whirled at us in eddying concentric circles.  Not far from the entrance to the village we met our house-folk out with lanterns to look for us.  It was past eleven at night when at last we entered warm rooms and refreshed ourselves for the tiring day with a jovial champagne supper.  Horses, carriage, and drunken driver reached home next morning.