A Night in the Snow | Page 7

any one direction would enable me to steer my course homewards. Day dawned at last, but hope and patience were to be yet further tried, for a dense fog clung to the face of the hill, obscuring everything but the objects close at hand. Furthermore, I discovered that I was rapidly becoming snow blind. My eyes, which had been considerably injured already by the sharp sleet of the evening before, were further affected by the glare of the snow, and I was fast losing all distinctness of vision. I first learned the extent of this new calamity when endeavouring, with the earliest light, to look at my watch. It was a work of great difficulty to get it out of my pocket; and when this was done, I found that I could not tell the face from the back. The whole thing was hazy and indistinct, and I can only describe it as looking like an orange seen through a mist. Such sight as remained rapidly became all confusion as regarded the form, colour, and proportion of objects. Again and again I thought I saw before me trees and enclosures, but these, when I came up to them, invariably turned out to be only portions of gorse bushes projecting through the snow. My optical delusions as to colour were perhaps the most remarkable; the protruding rocks invariably appeared of a strange orange yellow, with black lines along them, producing a short of tortoise-shell effect. I took these mysterious appearances at first for dead animals, ponies or sheep, and touched them to try to ascertain the fact. My hands, however, were so utterly devoid of sensation, that they were of no more use than my eyes in identifying objects. I was therefore quite in the dark as to their nature, till experience proved them to be rocks with tufts of heather on them. Owing to my failing eyesight, my falls became very frequent, and several of them were from heights so great that it would scarcely be believed were I to attempt to describe them. I may, however, say, that they were such as perfectly to appal those who, a few days afterwards, visited the spots where they occurred, and saw the deep impressions in the snow where I had plunged into it from the rocks above. One fall especially I well remember. I had just crossed the ridge of a hill, and saw, as I imagined, close below me a pool covered with ice, which seemed free from snow. I thought I would walk across this, and, accordingly, made a slight jump from the rock on which I stood in order to reach it. In a moment, however, I discovered that, instead of on to a pool, I had jumped into empty space. I must have fallen on this occasion a considerable distance, but I was caught in a deep snow-drift, so that, although considerably shaken and bewildered for the moment by what had happened, I was not seriously hurt.
I have been enabled by various circumstances, and by the help of those who followed my tracks before the snow melted, to make out with tolerable accuracy the course of my wanderings. Those who tracked me say that, "If there was one part of the hill more difficult and dangerous than another, that is the line which Mr. Carr took." When the morning light first dawned, I could see that I was walking along the side of a ravine of great depth, and more than usually perpendicular sides; it was so steep that I could not climb to the top of the ridge and get out of it, and the snow was in such a very loose, soft state, that I expected every moment it would give way beneath me, and I should be precipitated into the depths below. I had to walk with the greatest care to prevent this; and I believe that this was a very good thing for me, as it gave my mind complete occupation, and kept me from flagging. I could only go straight on, as I could not ascend, and was afraid to descend. My method of progression was more crawling than walking, as I had to drive my hands deep into the snow, and clutch at tufts of grass or heather, or any thing I could find beneath it, to hold on by. I must have gone forward in this way for an hour or two, when I found the ravine becoming less steep, and I heard the sound of running water very distinctly. Accordingly I thought I would descend and try once more whether I could walk down the stream, as this by its sound seemed a larger one, and I thought it might have cut a way through the drifts. I reached