There were many paths that led up into those mountains, and many
passes over them. But most of the paths were cheats and deceptions and
led nowhere or to bad ends; and most of the passes were infested by
evil things and dreadful dangers. The dwarves and the hobbit, helped
by the wise advice of Elrond and the knowledge and memory of Gandalf,
took the right road to the right pass.
     Long days after they had climbed out of the valley and left the Last
Homely House miles behind, they were still going up and up and up. It
was a hard path and a dangerous path, a crooked way and a lonely and a
long. Now they could look back over the lands they had left, laid out
behind them far below. Far, far away in the West, where things were
blue and faint, Bilbo knew there lay his own country of safe and
comfortable things, and his little hobbit-hole. He shivered. It was
getting bitter cold up here, and the wind came shrill among the rocks.
Boulders, too, at times came galloping down the mountain-sides, let
loose by midday sun upon the snow, and passed among them (which was
lucky), or over their heads (which was alarming). The nights were
comfortless and chill, and they did not dare to sing or talk too loud,
for the echoes were uncanny, and the silence seemed to dislike being
broken-except by the noise of water and the wail of wind and the crack