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and all near things were full of beauty and small
interests. The distant ranges across the valley remained
invisible, blotted out by damp mists as I took a few
minutes’ rest for breath, for the height tells on
the lungs even here, though not ten thousand
feet up. The sycamore disappeared above this,
and the trees were almost entirely pines, and
mixed with a few stunted birch. Seeing light
above me through the thinning trees I made a spurt,
and Killenmerg was reached. The sun is one of those
sociable companions that is so invariably looked to, to
share the traveller’s emotions that his full power to
cheer and encourage are not realised till withdrawn,
and seldom have desolation and loneliness weighed
more on my spirits that on my arrival that dull day at
the rock-strewn slope above Gulmerg. The elevation
is trying to heart and head, and the darts and stabs that
mark the drawing of each breath, and the dizzy singing
that obscures the sight, conduce to a weighty depression,
clogging the footsteps, and generally causing the death
of all energetic effort.
Far below, the little wooden shanties of Gulmerg
could be seen, but mist continued to stop all distant
views. Above, Apharwat looked strangely grey and forbidding,
its steep sides offering nothing less rugged than
boulders and ice as stepping-stones. A vast moraine
crossed the merg, obliging me to climb over the rocks,
with difficulty avoiding a slip that would have caused
an undignified and painful descent between sharp edges
and perhaps broken limbs, a difficult situation when
the largeness and loneliness of that rocky field was
considered. Through some such stone-strewn field
Childe Roland must have passed on his solitary ride to