that every object of hill and wood and lake lay dwarfed into one
continuous level, and at the back of this level, beyond the pines and the
lakes and the river-courses, rose the giant range, solid, impassable,
silent--a mighty barrier rising-midst an immense land, standing sentinel
over the plains and prairies of America, over the measureless solitudes
of this Great Lone Land. Here, at last, lay the Rocky Mountains.

Leaving behind the Medicine Hills, we descended into the plain and held
our way until sunset towards the west. It was a calm and beautiful
evening; far away objects stood out sharp and distinct in the pure
atmosphere of these elevated regions. For some hours we had lost sight of
the mountains, but shortly before sunset the summit of a long ridge was
gained, and they burst suddenly into view in greater magnificence than at
midday. Telling my men to go on and make the camp at the Medicine River,
I rode through some fire-wasted forest to a lofty grass-covered height
which the declining sun was bathing in floods of glory. I cannot hope to
put into the compass of words the scene which lay rolled beneath from
this sunset-lighted eminence; for, as I looked over the immense plain and
watched the slow descent of the evening sun upon the frosted crest of
these lone mountains, it seemed as if the varied scenes of my long
journey had woven themselves into the landscape, filling with the music
of memory the earth, the sky, and the mighty panorama of mountains. Here
at length lay the barrier to my onward wanderings, here lay the boundary
to that 4000 miles of unceasing travel which had carried me by so many
varied scenes so far into the lone-land; and other thoughts were not
wanting. The peaks on which I gazed were no pigmies; they stood the
culminating monarchs of the mighty range of the Rocky Mountains. From the
estuary of the Mackenzie to the Lake of Mexico no point of the American
continent reaches higher to the skies. That eternal crust of snow seeks
in summer widely-severed oceans. The Mackenzie, the Columbia, and the
Saskatchewan spring from the peaks whose teeth-like summits lie grouped
from this spot into the compass of a single glance. The clouds that cast
their moisture upon this long line of upheaven rocks seek again the ocean
which gave them birth in its far-separated divisions of Atlantic,
Pacific, and Arctic. The sun sank slowly behind the range and darkness
began to fall on the immense plain, but aloft on th