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THE PATHS TO SUANETIA 183
the burrows the TauH shepherds call tlieir homes. From the treeless
downs and impending ridges of Balkar and Bezingi we shall pass
into a country of comparatively open valleys, whei*e the villages are
not sordid hurrows but clusters of rustic castles, and the native
sledge-paths wander amidst woods and copses
and natm-al (lower-
gardens ; where, beneath the icy precipices
of the great chain, the
lower hills spread out in gentle horizontal curves ; where distance
succeeds distance in soft gradations of blue and purple, wliere the
atmosphei'e is full of moisture, and sunlit armies of clouds roll
up and disappear with a frequency which delights the eyes, if
it sometimes defeats the best-laid schemes of the mountaineer.
The poet Tennyson would sometimes describe to the companions
of his walks on the Downs of Freshwater a landscape he had
seen in dreams, in which, from a mountain range loftier than any on
this Earth, lofty as the great l)anks of clouds that are piled up
in summer skies, the pale rivers of ice streamed down into valleys
where the vines ran riot in the forests and the torrents flashed
seawards amidst flowers of the wildest luxuriance. There is little
or nothing in the Alps to suggest or realise this poet's dream. The
utmost luxuriance that is attained in any close proximity to the
glaciers is where the pines and sycamores
of Rosenlaui frame the
peaks of the Wetterhorner, or the Glacier des Bossons raises its milky
spires among the cornfields and cottages of the Chamonix valley.
The chestnuts of Val Anzasca are divided by many miles of rock,
pines, and pasture from the snows of Monte Rosa. Mr. lluskin,
indeed, once went so far as to suggest that the Maker of the Uni-
verse benevolently inserted a waste zone between the snows and
the habitable world, in order to secure mankind from the dangers
of living too immediately under structures in the dangerous state
of decay of most of the great ranges. Suanetians,
it would seem
to follow, were not held worthy of any such divine protection.
But
let us not endeavour to discover the designs of Providence. It is
enough for us that we are about to penetrate a region where that
close union of sublimity with softness, of sky-piercing snows with
vast fields of flowers and luxuriant forest scenery, which in the
Alps is an unattainable ideal, is found as an every-day reality.