n holding our breath when loose masses rocked
under our weight.

Once upon the summit, a grand view burst upon us. Hastening to step upon
the crest of the divide, which was never more than ten feet wide,
frequently sharpened to a mere blade, we looked down upon the other
side, and were astonished to find we had ascended the gentler slope, and
that the rocks fell from our feet in almost vertical precipices for a
thousand feet or more. A glance along the summit toward the highest
group showed us that any advance in that direction was impossible, for
the thin ridge was gashed down in notches three or four hundred feet
deep, forming a procession of pillars, obelisks, and blocks piled upon
each other, and looking terribly insecure.

We then deposited our knapsacks in a safe place, and, finding that it
was already noon, determined to rest a little while and take a lunch at
over 13,000 feet above the sea.

West of us stretched the Mount Brewer wall with its succession of
smooth precipices and amphitheatre ridges. To the north the great gorge
of the King's River yawned down 5,000 feet. To the south, the valley of
the Kern, opening in the opposite direction, was broader, less deep, but
more filled with broken masses of granite. Clustered about the foot of
the divide were a dozen alpine lakes; the higher ones blue sheets of
ice, the lowest completely melted. Still lower in the depths of the two
canons we could see groups of forest trees; but they were so dim and so
distant as never to relieve the prevalent masses of rock and snow. Our
divide cast its shadow for a mile down King's Canon in dark-blue profile
upon the broad sheets of sunny snow, from whose brightness the hard
splintered cliffs caught reflections and wore an aspect of joy.
Thousands of rills poured from the melting snow, filling the air with a
musical tinkle as of many accordant bells. The Kern Valley opened below
us with its smooth oval outline, the work of extinct glaciers, whose
form and extent were evident from worn cliff surface and rounded wall;
snow-fields, relics of the former _neve_ [glacier snow] hung in white
tapestries around its ancient birthplace; and, as far as we could see,
the broad, corrugated valley, for a breadth of fully ten miles, shone
with burnishings wherever its granite surface was not covered with
lakelets or thickets of alpine vegetation.

Through a deep cut in the Mount Brewer wall we gained our first view to
the westward, and saw in