al. From
the top of the moraine, still ascending, we passed for a mile or two
through a forest of mixed growth, mainly silver fir, Patton spruce,
and mountain pine, and then came to the charming park region, at an
elevation of about five thousand feet above sea level. Here the vast
continuous woods at length begin to give way under the dominion of
climate, though still at this height retaining their beauty and giving
no sign of stress of storm, sweeping upward in belts of varying width,
composed mainly of one species of fir, sharp and spiry in form, leaving
smooth, spacious parks, with here and there separate groups of trees
standing out in the midst of the openings like islands in a lake. Every
one of these parks, great and small, is a garden filled knee-deep with
fresh, lovely flowers of every hue, the most luxuriant and the most
extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all
my mountain-top wanderings.

We arrived at the Cloud Camp at noon, but no clouds were in sight, save
a few gauzy ornamental wreaths adrift in the sunshine. Out of the forest
at last there stood the mountain, wholly unveiled, awful in bulk and
majesty, filling all the view like a separate, new-born world, yet
withal so fine and so beautiful it might well fire the dullest observer
to desperate enthusiasm. Long we gazed in silent admiration, buried in
tall daisies and anemones by the side of a snowbank. Higher we could
not go with the animals and find food for them and wood for our own
campfires, for just beyond this lies the region of ice, with only here
and there an open spot on the ridges in the midst of the ice, with dwarf
alpine plants, such as saxifrages and drabas, which reach far up between
the glaciers, and low mats of the beautiful bryanthus, while back of us
were the gardens and abundance of everything that heart could wish. Here
we lay all the afternoon, considering the lilies and the lines of the
mountains with reference to a way to the summit.

At noon next day we left camp and began our long climb. We were in light
marching order, save one who pluckily determined to carry his camera
to the summit. At night, after a long easy climb over wide and smooth
fields of ice, we reached a narrow ridge, at an elevation of about ten
thousand feet above the sea, on the divide between the glaciers of the
Nisqually and the Cowlitz. Here we lay as best we could, waiting for
another day, without fire of course, as we were now