A mountain valley has, at the best, a certain prison-like effect on
the imagination, but a mountain valley, an Alpine winter, and an
invalid's weakness make up among them a prison of the most
effective kind.
The roads indeed are cleared, and at least one
footpath dodging up the hill; but to these the health-seeker is
rigidly confined. There are for him no cross-cuts over the field,
no following of streams, no unguided rambles in the wood. His
walks are cut and dry. In five or six different directions he can
push as far, and no farther, than his strength permits; never
deviating from the line laid down for him and beholding at each
repetition the same field of wood and snow from the same corner of
the road. This, of itself, would be a little trying to the
patience in the course of months; but to this is added, by the
heaped mantle of the snow, an almost utter absence of detail and an
almost unbroken identity of colour. Snow, it is true, is not
merely white. The sun touches it with roseate and golden lights.
Its own crushed infinity of crystals, its own richness of tiny
sculpture, fills it, when regarded near at hand, with wonderful
depths of coloured shadow, and, though wintrily transformed, it is
still water, and has watery tones of blue. But, when all is said,
these fields of white and blots of crude black forest are but a
trite and staring substitute for the infinite variety and
pleasantness of the earth's face.
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