many miles beyond
the timberline and without much to cover us. After eating a little
hardtack, each of us leveled a spot to lie on among lava-blocks and
cinders. The night was cold, and the wind coming down upon us in stormy
surges drove gritty ashes and fragments of pumice about our ears while
chilling to the bone. Very short and shallow was our sleep that night;
but day dawned at last, early rising was easy, and there was nothing
about breakfast to cause any delay. About four o'clock we were off,
and climbing began in earnest. We followed up the ridge on which we had
spent the night, now along its crest, now on either side, or on the
ice leaning against it, until we came to where it becomes massive and
precipitous. Then we were compelled to crawl along a seam or narrow
shelf, on its face, which we traced to its termination in the base of
the great ice cap. From this point all the climbing was over ice, which
was here desperately steep but fortunately was at the same time carved
into innumerable spikes and pillars which afforded good footholds, and
we crawled cautiously on, warm with ambition and exercise.

At length, after gaining the upper extreme of our guiding ridge, we
found a good place to rest and prepare ourselves to scale the dangerous
upper curves of the dome. The surface almost everywhere was bare, hard,
snowless ice, extremely slippery; and, though smooth in general, it was
interrupted by a network of yawning crevasses, outspread like lines of
defense against any attempt to win the summit. Here every one of the
party took off his shoes and drove stout steel caulks about half an
inch long into them, having brought tools along for the purpose, and
not having made use of them until now so that the points might not get
dulled on the rocks ere the smooth, dangerous ice was reached. Besides
being well shod each carried an alpenstock, and for special difficulties
we had a hundred feet of rope and an axe.

Thus prepared, we stepped forth afresh, slowly groping our way through
tangled lines of crevasses, crossing on snow bridges here and there
after cautiously testing them, jumping at narrow places, or crawling
around the ends of the largest, bracing well at every point with our
alpenstocks and setting our spiked shoes squarely down on the dangerous
slopes. It was nerve-trying work, most of it, but we made good speed
nevertheless, and by noon all stood together on the utmost summit, save
one who, his strength faili