> もうそんな寒さかと島村は外を眺めると、鉄道の官舎らしいバラックが山裾に寒々と散らばっているだけで、雪の色はそこまで行かぬうちに闇に呑まれていた。

I understand the meaning of dake and the te form; that is not my problem. My
problems has to do with how dake de in this case can connect to what follows.
How do you put this into a single sentence in English? Perhaps you can't,
which is why the translation of the text I have makes two sentences here. So
my question deals not with the grammar (or the meaning of dake and te) but the
sense of how the Japanese connects these two elements.
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meaning
Can someone explain the use of だけで in this sentence from Kawabata?
This で is a simple connector. You may know [te-form can be a reason
marker](http://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-particle-de-cause-
reason.html), but this で is nothing more than simple _and_. The sentence
basically says Shimamura only saw a few shacks, snow and darkness when he
looked out of the window. At least in this case, I think the translator could
have translated this sentence naturally without splitting it into two. But
when to split a sentence is basically at the discretion of each translator,
and there are times splitting a sentence can be a reasonable option. Japanese
sentences can be incredibly long if multiple で and
[だが/けれど](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/32826/5010) are used.

* * *

**Original Answer:**

The full context (from 雪国 by 川端康成):

> 向側の座席から娘が立って来て、島村の前のガラス窓を落とした。雪の冷気が流れ込んだ。娘は窓いっぱいに乗り出して、遠くへ叫ぶように、
> 「駅長さあん、駅長さあん。」  
>  明りをさげてゆっくり雪を踏んで来た男は、襟巻で鼻の上まで包み、耳に帽子の毛皮を垂れていた。  
>  もうそんな寒さかと島村は外を眺めると、鉄道の官舎らしいバラックが山裾に寒々と散らばっているだけで、雪の色はそこまで行かぬうちに闇に呑まれていた。

だけ means "only", and this で is the continuative form (or te-form) of the
copula だ. In this context, it means all he could saw was バラック's (or shacks).
Similar examples:

>   * 見ているだけです。 I'm just watching.
>   * 聞いただけで、信じてはいない。 I only heard about it, I don't believe it.
>   * この部屋には椅子があるだけで、他には何もない。 In this room, there is only a chair, nothing
> else.
>

Please don't clip a sentence unless you absolutely know what you're doing.
It's hard to explain the true meaning of this だけで without the part you
clipped.
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