I FOLLOWED my guide Chekai over the mountain marsh, where hundreds of bright yellow water-lilies were in blossom. The sun had just risen, the clouds were very white, and the clear sky was lambent greenish blue. “It’s going to be fine,” said the shepherd. “You’ll get across safely. In an hour you will come to the Southern Shelter, a white house; you can go in there and rest, and one of the soldiers will show you the way on. After the pass there is another house, but if it is stormy you won’t be able to see it for the snow. Never mind, you will hear the bell. There are two men on duty night and day, and they are obliged to ring the big bell whenever it is stormy. Perhaps they don’t ring it now in the winter, I don’t know; I’ve never been over before June when the road is black. Not more than four Ossetines have been over this month, but the soldiers go backwards and forwards seven or eight at a time.”  
We came to the margin of the unmelted snow and followed a track for about a mile, and then my companion began to complain that his feet were getting 205frozen, and I told him that if I was now on the right track I could dispense with him; he might go back. This evidently he was glad to do. I paid him a rouble in small change, every coin of which he said was bad, and we had to test them separately on a bit of rock before he would be satisfied. We then exchanged presents, blessed one another and parted.
 
I was walking on a white carpet apparently boundless. To right and to left and ahead the rocks lifted themselves aloft in white masses. In the sky the clouds, torn as by storm winds, rushed hither and thither, now veiling the peaks and now the road, or filtering upward and downward at the neck of the pass. Here is the place where the weather is manufactured and shared out between north and south. The sky promised everything on the shipman’s card. The sun suddenly shone out and flashed over all the snow with blinding brilliance, and then almost as suddenly became overcast as a foaming wave of cloud was tossed over it. I began to fear that the mists might hinder my crossing, or keep me waiting for hours on the desert of snow, afraid to go forward.
 
The ascent became more arduous. The snow was softer, and the surface not frozen hard enough to bear me. At every third step I sank to the knee; the staff the shepherd had given me saved me once or twice, but I could never tell when I should be upborne by the snow and when I should sink. After half a mile of this I 206stopped and gasped. I thought I couldn’t get on. Storm, however, threatened. I must go on. I took another step and sank as deep as it is possible for one leg to go. In pulling myself out I fell on one shoulder and almost went out of sight. It was like the hindered progress in a nightmare. I must have rested ten minutes before I set forward again, and walked fifty yards by three steps and a fall irregularly along the faint track. I felt like Dorando at the finish of his race at Earl’s Court.
 
An hour’s struggle brought me to the Southern Shelter, a military station cold and uninviting, but even so a delight to my eyes, a very oasis in the wilderness. I saw no one there, and therefore did not stop. It seemed to me I must soon reach the summit. I was, however, destined to disappointment. The track now led up a steep bank, a weary way. I was constantly up to the waist in snow, and not a step that I took seemed to grip or take me appreciably forward. To add to the difficulties, the snow of last night’s storm had almost completely effaced the track; it was only with the greatest difficulty that the eye discerned............