meat boiled and roast, served with those
luscious jams dear to German appetites,
concluding with cakes so light and snowy,
they would not have disgraced the counter
of a Parisian confiseur. A cheerful and
courteous waitress, her money-bag by her
side, glorying in the good cheer she
presented, pressed each delicacy on our notice,
and with that friendliness peculiar to
unsophisticated Germans, insisted on dispensing
such prodigious "portions", that I was
fain privately to bestow much on the
attendant dogs, who hovered round the
feast, regardless of her objurgations, threats,
and occasional kicks. Two travellers sat at
a side-table drinking beer, and wreathing
us in clouds of tobacco-smoke. Altogether
we composed ourselves unconsciously into
a Dutch picture.

By this time I had discovered where I
was going, and, better still, how I was to
go. The eilwagen we had left, and in which
we could only ticket ourselves thus far,
proceeded at the conclusion of this Homeric
feast to Lienz, on the high road into
Carinthia. At the door of our inn stood
another vehicle, dignified as the courier or
post-carriage, which traversed the very
heart of the Dolomite region to Cortino and
the valley of the Ampezzo, hence to Belluno,
touching the Trieste rail at Conegliano.

Our lines had fallen in pleasant places;
we were the only passengers: the coachman,
both courier and letter dispenser,
with a prospective view to a thaler, invited
me to mount beside him on the box, having
observed my partiality to that position,
promising me ample time to gaze, or even
to halt, at any points specially noteworthy.
Thus all fears vanished, as had the clouds
meantime from the mountain tops: sunshine
diffused itself both within and without.
I was not on the road to Carinthia or the
Danubian provinces. The Dolomites must
shortly become visible, and I had a fair
prospect of sleeping peacefully in any bed
I might select along the route.

At what precise moment ignorance
became knowledge, and curiosity ceased, is a
question I have vainly endeavoured since
to ask myself. A minute analysis of how
strange things and stranger facts force
themselves spontaneously upon the mind
in conscious presence is impossible, for
thought is electric, and defies the slowness
of any analytical process. I cannot, therefore,
recal what I felt on first realising the
desire of years, and actually feasting my
eyes on a Dolomite. Besides, on approaching
by this route they creep upon you
unawares, the adjacent mountains gradually
assuming singular and fantastic shapes,
increasing in eccentricity until the actual
presence of these wondrous giants burst
upon you—a phantasmagoria of form and
colour. Their splintered sides and many-
spiked peaks, sharp as sword-points,
perpendicular as a line, or rounded into slender
domes, with here and there projecting
rocks breaking the fantastic outlines, are
all of calcareous stone, now warmed by the
hot sun into roseate pink or lurid red,
otherwise ghastly white. It is difficult to
liken such weird forms to any known
object, but at the moment they reminded me
of glorified masses of crystallised spa, ten
and twelve thousand feet high. Geologists
say that they may be coral reefs of
antediluvian seas, washed bare by the waters of
endless centuries. Of this I know nothing,
but the unearthly character of these
fantastic zigzagged cliffs, so fragile that one
wonders the wind does not rend them
asunder, is utterly distinct from any other
created thing. A lifetime might be passed
among mountains and yet not the faintest
conceivable image be got of these.

Leaving the main road to Lienz, along
which we had hitherto journeyed, a short
turn to the right presently plunges into a
deep and narrow pass, black with fir-woods,
its entrance guarded by grandest portals
of Dolomites. A lonely lake with reedy
shores (its waters green with the shadows
of the forest), nestling under the steep
mountain sides, gives the finishing touch
to this sublime solitude. The gloom and
silence are absolutely appalling alone with
these awful mountains, ghastly pale, or
strangely red, as the sunlight comes and
goes—towering aloft out of the deeply
shadowed woods into the blue sky.

From the time one enters this wondrous
pass, along which the road follows the
shores of the river Rienz, through dense
woods, feebly endeavouring to encroach
upwards towards the summits, where not a
single shrub or blade of grass ever grows,
none but Dolomites are visible. I had
invoked them, and they appeared horribly,
appallingly beautiful.

For more than an hour we followed this
pass, bordered by terraced mountains,
growing wilder as we advanced, the
summits thickening in sharper clusters, while
other peaks, and spires, and domes thrust
themselves forward from behind, up lateral
valleys, over perpendicular cliffs, showing
that the whole land was a sea of Dolomites.