is heart but joy
at the splendor of it.

At our feet the mountain fell away abruptly, pine-clad, and at its base
the broad plain of the East Branch of the Yellowstone wandered through a
vast valley, beyond which, in a huge semicircle, rose a thousand
nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in
boundless fields--a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren
peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right
in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone,
perhaps a good thousand feet high. I thought it the most savage
mountain-scenery I had ever beheld, while the almost feminine and tender
beauty of the parks which dotted these wild hills was something to bear
in remembrance.

But the escort was moving, the mules crowding on behind our halted
column; so presently we were slipping, sliding, floundering down the
hillside, now on steep slopes, which made one a bit nervous to ride
along; now waiting for the axemen to clear away the tangle of trees
crushed to earth by the burden of some year of excessive snow; now on
the horses, now off, through marsh and thicket. I ask myself if I could
ride that ride to-day: it seems to me as if I could not. One so fully
gets rid of nerves in that clear, dry altitude and wholesome life that
the worst perils, with a little repetition, become as trifles, and no
one talks about things which at home would make a newspaper paragraph.
Yet I believe each of us confessed to some remnant of nervousness, some
special dread. Riding an hour or two at night in a dense wood with no
trail is an experiment I advise any man to try who thinks he has no
nerves. A good steep slope of a thousand feet of loose stones to cross
is not much more exhilarating: nobody likes it.

The command was far ahead of two or three of us when we had our final
sensation at a smart little torrent near the foot of the hill, a
tributary of the main river. The horses dive, in a manner, into a cut
made dark by overgrowth of trees, then down a slippery bank, scuttle
through wild waters surging to the cinche, over vast boulders and up the
farther bank, the stirrups striking the rocks to left or right, till
horse and man draw long breaths of relief, and we are out on the
slightly-rolling valley of the East Yellowstone, and turn our heads away
from Specimen Mountain toward Soda Butte.

Captain G. and I, who had fallen to the rear, rode leisurely northward
athwart