The ant is strong, but we saw another strong thing,
where we had not suspected the presence of much muscular
power before. A toadstool--that vegetable which springs
to full growth in a single night--had torn loose and
lifted a matted mass of pine needles and dirt of twice
its own bulk into the air, and supported it there,
like a column supporting a shed. Ten thousand toadstools,
with the right purchase, could lift a man, I suppose.
But what good would it do?

All our afternoon's progress had been uphill. About five
or half past we reached the summit, and all of a sudden
the dense curtain of the forest parted and we looked
down into a deep and beautiful gorge and out over a
wide panorama of wooded mountains with their summits
shining in the sun and their glade-furrowed sides dimmed
with purple shade. The gorge under our feet--called
Allerheiligen--afforded room in the grassy level at its
head for a cozy and delightful human nest, shut away
from the world and its botherations, and consequently
the monks of the old times had not failed to spy it out;
and here were the brown and comely ruins of their church
and convent to prove that priests had as fine an instinct
seven hundred years ago in ferreting out the choicest
nooks and corners in a land as priests have today.

A big hotel crowds the ruins a little, now, and drives
a brisk trade with summer tourists. We descended
into the gorge and had a supper which would have been