e the
lake margin, we could look down fully a hundred feet through the
transparent water to where boulders and pebbles were strewn upon the
stone bottom. We had now reached the base of Mount Brewer and were
skirting its southern spurs in a wide open corridor surrounded in all
directions by lofty granite crags from two to four thousand feet high;
above the limits of vegetation, rocks, lakes of deep heavenly blue, and
white trackless snows were grouped closely about us. Two sounds, a sharp
little cry of martens and occasional heavy crashes of falling rock,
saluted us.

Climbing became exceedingly difficult, light air--for we had already
reached 12,500 feet--beginning to tell on our lungs to such an extent
that my friend, who had taken turns with me in carrying my pack, was
unable to do so any longer, and I adjusted it to my own shoulders for
the rest of the day.

After four hours of slow laborious work we made the base of the debris
slope which rose about a thousand feet to a saddle pass in the western
mountain wall, that range upon which Mount Brewer is so prominent a
point. We were nearly an hour in toiling up this slope over an uncertain
footing which gave way at almost every step. At last, when almost at the
top, we paused to take breath, and then all walked out upon the crest,
laid off our packs, and sat down together upon the summit of the ridge,
and for a few minutes not a word was spoken.

The Sierras are here two parallel summit ranges. We were upon the crest
of the western range, and looked down into a gulf 5,000 feet deep,
sinking from our feet in abrupt cliffs nearly or quite 2,000 feet, whose
base plunged into a broad field of snow lying steep and smooth for a
great distance, but broken near its foot by craggy steps often a
thousand feet high.

Vague blue haze obscured the lost depths, hiding details, giving a
bottomless distance out of which, like the breath of wind, floated up a
faint treble, vibrating upon the senses, yet never clearly heard.

Rising on the other side, cliff above cliff, precipice piled upon
precipice, rock over rock, up against sky, towered the most gigantic
mountain-wall in America, culminating in a noble pile of gothic-finished
granite and enamel-like snow. How grand and inviting looked its white
form, its untrodden, unknown crest, so high and pure in the clear strong
blue! I looked at it as one contemplating the purpose of his life; and
for just one moment I would have rather lik