On either side steep acclivities
hemmed them in, and also made them constantly ascend. Whenever they
turned downward the slopes proved so precipitous that they were
compelled to retreat. Frequently they met obstacles and often had to
avoid steep slopes.
They began to notice that whenever their feet sank in through the new
snow they no longer felt the rocky soil underneath but something else
which seemed like older, frozen snow; but still they pushed onward and
marched fast and perseveringly. Whenever they made a halt everything was
still, unspeakably still. When they resumed their march they heard the
shuffling of their feet and nothing else; for the veils of heaven
descended without a sound, and so abundantly that one might have seen
the snow grow. The children themselves were covered with it so that they
did not contrast with the general whiteness and would have lost each
other from sight had they been separated but a few feet.
A comfort it was that the snow was as dry as sand so that it did not
adhere to their boots and stockings or cling and wet them.
At last they approached some other objects. They were gigantic fragments
lying in wild confusion and covered with snow sifting everywhere into
the chasms between them. The children almost touched them before seeing
them. They went up to them to examine what they were.
It was ice--nothing but ice.
There were snow-covered slabs on whose lateral edges the smooth green
ice became visible; there were hillocks that looked like heaped-up
foam, but whose inward-looking crevices had a dull sheen and lustre as
if bars and beams of gems had been flung pellmell.
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