e sooner than we could have
wished, but Professor Brewer and Hoffman had breakfasted before sunrise,
and were off with barometer and theodolite upon their shoulders,
proposing to ascend our amphitheatre to its head and climb a great
pyramidal peak which swelled up against the eastern sky, closing the
view in that direction.

We, who remained in camp, spent the day in overhauling campaign
materials and preparing for a grand assault upon the summits. For a
couple of hours we could descry our friends through the field-glasses,
their minute black forms moving slowly on among piles of giant debris;
now and then lost, again coming into view, and at last disappearing
altogether.

It was twilight of evening and almost eight o'clock when they came back
to camp, Brewer leading the way, Hoffman following; and as they sat down
by our fire without uttering a word we read upon their faces terrible
fatigue.

So we hastened to give them supper of coffee and soup, bread and
venison, which resulted, after a time, in our getting in return the
story of the day.

For eight whole hours they had worked up over granite and snow, mounting
ridge after ridge, till the summit was made about two o'clock.

These snowy crests bounding our view at the eastward we had all along
taken to be the summits of the Sierra, and Brewer had supposed himself
to be climbing a dominant peak, from which he might look eastward over
Owen's Valley and out upon leagues of desert. Instead of this a vast
wall of mountains, lifted still higher than his peak, rose beyond a
tremendous canon which lay like a trough between the two parallel ranks
of peaks. Hoffman showed us on his sketch-book the profile of this new
range, and I instantly recognized the peaks which I had seen from
Mariposa, whose great white pile had led me to believe them the highest
points of California.

For a couple of months my friends had made me the target of plenty of
pleasant banter about my "highest land," which they lost faith in as we
climbed from Thomas's Mill,--I too becoming a trifle anxious about it;
but now the truth had burst upon Brewer and Hoffman they could not find
words to describe the terribleness and grandeur of the deep canon, nor
for picturing those huge crags towering in line at the east. Their peak,
as indicated by the barometer, was in the region of 13,400 feet, and a
level across to the farther range showed its crests to be at least 1,500
feet higher. They had spent hours