Our quarters at the shelter-hut in the pine valley were so satisfactory, and its situation so delightful, that instead of remaining only two nights, as had been originally intended, we stayed there a whole week, exploring the valley in all directions, making sketches of the principal points, and collecting supplies of the rare ferns and mosses with which the neighborhood abounded, along with the alpen-rose, which we often discovered still flowering at sheltered places.

A thorough dose of nature enjoyed in this way acts like a regenerating medicine on a mind and body wearied and weakened by a long strain of conventionalities. It is refreshing merely to look round on a beautiful scene as yet untainted by the so-called civilizing breath of man, who, too often attempting to paint the lily, invariably vulgarizes when he seeks to improve the work of the Creator. What unmixed delight to see here everything unspoiled and unadulterated, each tree and flower living out its natural life, or falling into beautiful decay, without having been turned aside from its original vocation, or distorted to an unnatural use to minister to some imaginary want of sensual, cruel, greedy, rapacious man; to find one little spot where nature yet reigns supreme; to be able to gaze around and say that those splendid fir-stems will not be cut up in a noisy saw-mill, nor yet defiled by vulgar paint; those late scarlet strawberries hanging in coral fringes from pearl-gray rocks will not be sold at so much a pint and{381} cooked into sickly jams; those prickly fir-cones will not be abstracted from their rightful owners, the red-coated squirrels, to adorn the tasteless veranda of some popular beer-house; the swelling outlines of those glorious blue gentians will be flattened in no improved herbarium, nor those gorgeous butterflies invited to lay down their young lives to further the interests of science; those brown leaping trout will, thank Heaven, never, never figure on an illuminated menu card as truites à la Chambord, to flatter the palate of some dissipated sybarite! The pure light of the north star alone will point out my direction, and neither Kant nor Hegel will rise from his grave to torment me here.

THE PINE VALLEY.

It is wonderful how soon one gets accustomed to roughing it, and doing without the comforts and luxuries of daily life, and it is delightful to discover that civilization is only skin-deep after all. On the second morning it seemed no hardship to perform our toilet at a mountain spring shrouded in a pine-tree boudoir; empty bottles were very worthy substitutes for silver candlesticks; and for brushing our{382} dress and cleansing our boots, a wild Wallachian peasant quite as useful as a trained femme de chambre.

Dress and fashion, uniforms and coffee-houses, the wearisome chit-chat of a little country town, as well as the intricacies of European politics, had all passed out of our lives as though they had never existed, leaving no regret, scarcely even a memory. It seemed hardly possible to believe that such useless and unnatural things as false hair, diamond ear-rings, military parades, cream-laid note-paper, calling-cards, sugar-tongs, intrigue, envy, and ambition existed somewhere or other about the world. Were there really other forms of music extant than the lullaby of the water-fall, and the wild pibroch of the wind among the fir-stems? other sorts of perfumes than the pine wood fragrance and the breath of wild thyme?

While we were thus revelling in the pure ozone above, two emperors were meeting in some dull corner of the dingy earth below,[83] and all Europe was looking on and holding its breath, in order to catch some echo of the royal syllables interchanged.

For our part, we completely skipped this page of European history, and felt none the worse of it. Everything changes proportion up here, and a real eagle becomes of far more absorbing interest than a double-headed one. We were virtually as isolated as though cast on a desert island in the Pacific; and but for one messenger despatched to assure us of the welfare of our respective families, we had no communication with the world we had left.

Here we had a hundred other sources of interest of more absorbing and healthier kind than the so-called pleasures we had left below. First there was the water-fall, a never-failing element of beauty and interest. It was delightful to sketch it, sitting on a moss-grown stone at the edge of the torrent; it was yet more delightful to clamber up to its base, and clinging on to a rock, receive the breath of its spray full on our face, and enjoy at close quarters the musical thunder of its voice. Not far from this was the place where, three years previously, the great avalanche had swept over the valley, felling prostrate every tree which came in its passage. All across one side of the glen, and half-way up the opposite hill, can still be traced the ravaging march of the destroying forces; for here the woodman never comes with his{383} axe, and each tree still lies prostrate where it was stricken down, like giant ninepins overthrown; and here they will lie undisturbed till they rot away and turn to soft red dust, mute vouchers of the terrible power of unchained nature. One felt inclined to envy the bears and eagles for this glorious sight, of which they alone can have been the fortunate spectators.

Another point of interest indicated by our guides was the bridge of fir-stems over a steep ravine, where years ago a terrified flock of sheep, pursued by a bear in broad daylight, had leaped down over the precipitous edge, upwards of three hundred breaking their legs in their frenzied attempts to escape.

The shepherds who lived above in the stony valley came frequently down to our shelter-hut, and we used to find them comfortably ensconced at our camp-fire, in deep conversation with the guides. In their lonely existence it must have been a pleasant experience to have neighbors at all within reach, and our hospitable camp-fire was doubtless as good as a fashionable club to their simple minds. They brought us of their sheep’s milk and cheese. The latter, called here brindza, was very palatable, and the milk much thicker and richer than cow’s milk, but of a peculiar taste which I failed to appreciate.

There was a shepherdess, too, belonging to the establishment; but let no one, misled by the appellation, instinctively conjure up visions of delicate pastel-paintings or coquettish porcelain figurines, for anything more utterly at variance with the associations suggested by the names of Watteau and Vieux Saxe, than the uncouth, swarthy, one-eyed damsel who inhabited the bergerie, cannot well be imagined. The male shepherds were four in number—two of them calling for no special description; the third, a boy of about fourteen, with large, senseless eyes and a fixed, idiotic stare, looked no more than semi-human. The most distinguished member of the party, and, as we ladies unanimously agreed, decidedly the flower of the flock, was a good-looking young man of some twenty years, with straight-cut, regular features, a high brown fur cap, and a wooden flute on which he played in a queer, monotonous fashion, resembling the droning tones of a bagpipe. He had come from Roumania, he told us, and had been for a time tending flocks in Turkey, where he had picked up something of the language. It was a curious country, he observed, and the people there had curious habits—such, for instance, as that of keeping several wives; the richer a man was, the more wives he kept.{384} Our young shepherd shrugged his shoulders as he made this remark in a supercilious manner, evidently of opinion that women were an evil which should not be unnecessarily multiplied; and certainly, judging from the solitary specimen of female beauty which the stony valley contained, no man could feel tempted to embark in a very extensive harem.

We afterwards ascertained that the interesting shepherd with the fur cap and wooden flute had committed a murder over in Roumania, and been obliged to fly the country on that account. This disclosure rendered us somewhat more reserved in our intercourse with our romantic neighbor, and though we could not exactly put a stop to his visits, we avoided over-intimacy, and always felt more at ease in his society when there was a gun or revolver within handy reach.

Our Wallachian guides proved thoroughly satisfactory in every way—active, obliging, and full of inventive resources. They were very particular about keeping their fast-days as prescribed by the Greek Church, and would refuse all offers of food at such times. When not fasting they were easily made happy by any scraps of cheese or bacon left over from our meals, or by a glassful of spirits of wine judiciously adulterated with water. On one occasion a parcel containing a dozen hard-boiled eggs, grown stale (to put............