iving their groaning tributaries
from every evacuating height. The dim blue lowlands, now devoid of snow,
stretch away to the northeast, with threads of stream and patches of
lake that still carry ice along their banks.

And all this splendor and diversity yielded itself up to us at once;
that was the most sensational and spectacular feature of it. We went to
sleep in a smother of mist; we had seen nothing as we climbed; we rose
to a clear, sparkling day. The clouds were mysteriously rolling away
from the lowest depths; the last wisps of vapor were sweeping over the
ultimate heights. Here one would like to camp through a whole week of
fine weather could such a week ever be counted upon. Higher than any
point in the United States, the top of the Browne Tower probably on a
level with the top of Mount Blanc, it is yet not so high as to induce
the acute breathlessness from which the writer suffered, later, upon any
exertion. The climbing of the tower, the traversing to the other side of
it, the climbing of the ridge, would afford pleasant excursions, while
the opportunity for careful though difficult photography would be
unrivalled. Even in thick weather the clouds are mostly below; and their
rapid movement, the kaleidoscopic changes which their coming and going,
their thickening and thinning, their rising and falling produce, are a
never-failing source of interest and pleasure. The changes of light and
shade, the gradations of color, were sometimes wonderfully delicate and
charming. Seen through rapidly attenuating mist, the bold crags of the
icy ridge between the glacier arms in the foreground would give a soft
French gray that became a luminous mauve before it sprang into dazzling
black and white in the sunshine. In the sunshine, indeed, the whole
landscape was hard and brilliant, and lacked half-tones, as in the main
it lacked color; but when the vapor drew the gauze of its veil over it
there came rich, soft, elusive tints that were no more than hinted ere
they were gone.

[Illustration: Above all the range except Denali and Denali's Wife.]

[Sidenote: The Himalayas]

Here, with nothing but rock and ice and snow around, nine thousand feet
above any sort of vegetation even in the summer, it was of interest to
remember that at the same altitude in the Himalayas good crops of barley
and millet are raised and apples are grown, while at a thousand feet or
so lower the apricot is ripened on the terrace-gardens.

Karstens