The lake was cold, black, evil, no more than five hundred yards in length,

scarcely two hundred in breadth, a crooked stretch of glassy calm shadowed by

the mountainsides that slipped steeply into its dark waters and went plunging

down. There were no roads, no marked paths around it; only a few tracks,

narrow ribbons, wound crazily along its high sides, sometimes climbing up and

around the rough crags, sometimes dropping to the sparse clumps of fir at its

water line. The eastern tip of the lake was closed off by a ridge of precipices.

The one approach was by its western end. Here, the land eased away into

gentler folds, forming a stretch of fine alpine grass strewn with pitted boulders

and groups of more firs. This was where the trail, branching up from the rough

road that linked villages and farms on the lower hills, ended in a bang and a

whimper: a view of forbidding grandeur and a rough wooden table with two

benches where the summer visitor could eat his hard-boiled eggs and caraway-

sprinkled ham sandwiches.