How many notes there
are in these bells! quite a diapason - some very deep toned, and so on
up to the highest! how prettily they sound, all going together! The
bells are made of the best of metal, for the tone is of an admirable
quality.
0, do look off there, on that patch of snow under the Wetterhorn! It
is all covered with cows; they look no bigger than insects. "What
makes them go there?" said we to our guides.
"_To be cool_" was the answer.
Hark! what's that? a sudden sound like the rush of a cascade.
"Avalanche! avalanche!" exclaimed the guide. And now, pouring down the
sides of the Wetterhorn, came a milk-white cascade, looking just like
any other cascade, melting gracefully over the rocks, and spreading,
like a stream of milk, on the soiled snow below.
This is a summer avalanche - a mere _bijou_ - a fancy article, got
up, or rather got down, to entertain travellers. The winter avalanches
are quite other things. Witness a little further in our track, where
our guide stops us, and points to a place where all the pines have
been broken short off by one of them. Along here some old ghostly
pines, dead ages ago, their white, ghastly skeletons bleached by a
hundred storms, stand, stretching out their long, bony arms, like
phantom giants.
