hest summits
rose all flushed, and with an illusion of transparency, so that one
might believe that they were taking on the hue of sunset. Below these
lay broken ravines of fantastic rocks, cleft and canyoned by the river,
with a tender unearthly light over all, the apparent warmth of a glowing
clime, while I on the north side was in the shadow among the pure
unsullied snow.

"'With us the damp, the chill, the gloom;
With them the sunset's rosy bloom.'

"The dimness of earth with me, the light of heaven with them. Here,
again, worship seemed the only attitude for a human spirit, and the
question was ever present, 'Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of
him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?' I rode up and down
hills laboriously in snow-drifts, getting off often to ease my faithful
Birdie by walking down ice-clad slopes, stopping constantly to feast my
eyes upon that changeless glory, always seeing some new ravine, with its
depths of colour or miraculous brilliancy of red or phantasy of form.
Then below, where the trail was locked into a deep canyon, where there
was scarcely room for it and the river, there was a beauty of another
kind in solemn gloom. There the stream curved and twisted marvellously,
widening into shallows, narrowing into deep boiling eddies, with
pyramidal firs and the beautiful silver spruce fringing its banks, and
often falling across it in artistic grace, the gloom chill and deep,
with only now and then a light trickling through the pines upon the cold
snow, when, suddenly turning round, I saw behind, as if in the glory of
an eternal sunset, those flaming and fantastic peaks. The effect of the
combination of winter and summer was singular. The trail rose on the
north side the whole time, and the snow lay deep and pure white, while
not a wreath of it lay on the south side, where abundant lawns basked in
the warm sun."[43]

There is something in the majesty of mountain scenery, in the lofty
peaks, the shadowy ravines, and the tremendous precipices; in the glow
and light and glory which the sun pours out upon the heights, and the
strange gloom and haunted darkness which sleep in the mysterious depths,
that deeply impresses the imagination and the thoughts of men, and
appeals to that higher, purer nature which too often lies dormant in us.
However unmoved we may be by the ordinary sights and sounds which fill
up the landscapes, we are most of us hushed and breathless among the