Winter Sports in Switzerland. E. F. Benson
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or Sils. Often, unfortunately, it happens that a snowfall will occur when they are but lightly frozen over, in which case the snow quite covers them, breaks through perhaps in places, and with the ice already formed, makes a rough uneven surface useless to the skater, and to the beholder no more than a level snow-field, with perhaps ugly stains on it where the water has come through and formed the grey ice, which is of no artistic moment. But sometimes it happens that a snowfall occurs before any ice has formed on the lake, and thus, though it lies on the surrounding ground, it melts in the water, and at the end of the fall the lake is still unfrozen, though the winter mantle lies over field and wood. Then let us suppose there comes a hard frost with no more snow. Night after night ice absolutely clear like glass forms on the water and gradually thickens. If the days are windless it is entirely smooth, and practically invisible, so that it is impossible to believe that you are not looking on a sheet of water. Then the glad word goes forth that the lake bears, and you hurry forth to skate on it. But mountain and wood and landscape are all mirrored in it as in perfectly still water, and it is almost incredible that here is ice a foot or two thick. Tremblingly you launch yourself on it, scarcely able to believe in its solidity; for through that unwavering surface you see every weed and stump under water. The very fishes flit and flick visibly below your feet, and so glassy is it that through it it is possible to see the subaqueous foundations of the lacustrine dwellings in the lake of Sils, never to be seen unless the lake is frozen, since the slightest ripple of the water sets the surface a-quiver and mars its translucency. But seen through this foot or so of perfectly clear ice—black ice, as it is called—it is as if one looked through that charming contrivance called the bathyscope, by which you can observe the depths of the sea. Below the ice, the water lies still and in a calm sheltered by this solid ceiling of crystal, and you see, as if in an aquarium, the fishes and the water-weeds, and all the gales that ever blew will not shatter the reflections or obscure the depths. Then when your courage has come to you, and you begin to grasp the fact that an army might march across this invisible plain of ice without breaking through, you will no doubt venture forth from the shore, and feel what you never feel on rinks and other prepared surfaces of ice, the divine elasticity of your floor. And very likely just when you are some half-mile from the shore, you will be terror-stricken to hear a crack as of artillery resound close to you, and a great crack will zigzag like lightning through the ice. The first time you hear that, the present writer is willing to wager any reasonable sum that your face will blanch (unless too sun-tanned) and you will skate with incredible celerity for the nearest land. But that salvo portends no danger whatever, except if your skate-blade enters such a crack (of which there will be, unfortunately, a considerable number in the course of a few days) longitudinally. Then it is true you may have a fall, but these explosions do not mean that you will ever be food for fishes.
But after a few days, in all probability, even though no snow falls, the surface of the ice, except where it is kept swept, becomes useless for skating, thanks to another of the wonderful conjuring tricks of the frost. Owing to dew, or from other moisture in the air, there begin to form upon the ice little nuclei of hoar-frost such as are seen in Plate VI. They look harmless enough, and with perfect justice you admire their exquisite fanlike fronds, and think no more of them. But in a couple of days the same surface, as shown from the identical point of view in Plate VII, presents a totally different aspect, and one which is clearly discouraging to the most ardent of skaters. But then, since you are finally and completely and irrevocably thwarted in any ambition to skate on this depressing surface (for it is as if all the ice-moles in the world had made their common earth there, multiplying exceedingly), you will be wise to examine and admire the astounding forms of this fairy frost-work before it becomes confluent, and, losing the individuality of its separate tufts, covers the whole lake like powdery snow. In Plate VIII you may see the marvellous delicacy in detail of these bouquets of frost-flowers, and the same on larger scale in Plate IX, where they are already becoming a very jungle of anti-tropical growth.
In that wonderful poem “By the Fireside,” Robert Browning, in speaking of the Alps in autumn, says:
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