e
mountain's flank; or, winding zigzag down some narrow canyon wall, made
themselves at home under the slender, small-trunked alders; and added to
the stores that Croesus packed, many a lusty trout from the tumbling, icy
torrent. Again, high up on some wind-swept granite ridge or peak, where
the pines were twisted and battered and torn by the warring elements, they
looked far down upon the rolling sea of clouds that hid the world below;
or, in the shelter of some mighty cliff, built their fires; and, when the
night was clear, saw, miles away and below, the thousands of twinkling
star-like lights of the world they had left behind. Or, again, they halted
in some forest and hill encircled glen; where the lush grass in the
cienaga grew almost as high as Croesus' back, and the lilies even higher;
and where, through the dark green brakes, the timid deer come down to
drink at the beginning of some mountain stream. At last, their wanderings
carried them close under the snowy heights of San Gorgonio--the loftiest
of all the peaks. That night, they camped at timber-line and in the
morning,--leaving Croesus and the outfit, while it was still dark,--made
their way to the top, in time to see the sun come up from under the edge
of the world.

So they were received into the inner life of the mountains; so the spirit
that dwells in that unmarred world whispered to them the secrets of its
enduring strength and lofty peace.

From San Gorgonio, they followed the trail that leads down to upper Clear
Creek--halting, one night, at Burnt Pine Camp on Laurel Creek, above the
falls. Then--leaving the Laurel trail--they climbed over a spur of the
main range, and so down the steep wall of the gorge to Lone Cabin on Fern
Creek. The next day, they made their way on down to the floor of the main
canyon--five miles above the point where they had left it at the beginning
of their wanderings.

Crossing the canyon at the Clear Creek Power Company's intake, they took
the company trail that follows the pipe-line along the southern wall. From
the headwork to the reservoir two thousand feet above the power-house at
the mouth of Clear Creek Canyon, this trail is cut in the steep side of
the Galena range--overhanging the narrow valley below--nine beautiful
miles of it. At Oak Knoll,--where a Government trail for the Forest Ranger
zigzags down from the pipe-line to the wagon road below,--they halted.

Conrad Lagrange explained that there were three ways bac