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Rh of the sea, and as the train stopped here for about five minutes I came out to have a better view of this famous pass. I had travelled by the pass of St. Gothard fifteen years before—before a railway had been constructed through it,—but I had travelled then in July, and there was no snow then on the pass. The view of the Brenner Pass in the end of November was grander and finer. One vast white sheet of snow covered the narrow pass and the towering rocky walls that rose on both sides of it. The hardy pines on the sides of the rocks had lost their bloom and were mostly brownish. Drops of water issuing from the rocks had frozen into icicles, or had collected here and there on the ground and frozen into ice, which broke under the feet. The cold was bracing and to me delightful, and a bright sun shone from a blue, cloudless, mistless sky over this magnificent scene.

Our train now began its descent, and the descent was far easier, as the poet has sung, than the ascent. Our train went rapidly downwards, through tunnels and along precipices, and soon we saw far below us a beautiful valley and the infant river Adige flowing through it. The Adige, which is a mighty river in Italy, is a tiny infant stream here which a child can cross without waiting his knees! Our train winded down the side of the hill, and within half an hour we found ourselves in the beautiful valley which we had observed erewhile from the above!

And now we went down further and further southwards, along the course of the Adige, and through one of