es, cedars,
redwoods, and joy of life until another great cleft opened before us or
another great mountain-pass barred our way.

This was the web and woof of our summer. But through it ran the
patterns of fantastic delight such as the West alone can offer a man's
utter disbelief in them. Some of these patterns stand out in memory
with peculiar distinctness.

Below Farewell Gap is a wide canon with high walls of dark rock, and
down those walls run many streams of water. They are white as snow
with the dash of their descent, but so distant that the eye cannot
distinguish their motion. In the half light of dawn, with the yellow
of sunrise behind the mountains, they look like gauze streamers thrown
out from the windows of morning to celebrate the solemn pageant of the
passing of many hills.

Again, I know of a canon whose westerly wall is colored in the dull
rich colors, the fantastic patterns of a Moorish tapestry. Umber, seal
brown, red, terra-cotta, orange, Nile green, emerald, purple, cobalt
blue, gray, lilac, and many other colors, all rich with the depth of
satin, glow wonderful as the craftiest textures. Only here the fabric
is five miles long and half a mile wide.

There is no use in telling of these things. They, and many others of
their like, are marvels, and exist; but you cannot tell about them, for
the simple reason that the average reader concludes at once you must be
exaggerating, must be carried away by the swing of words. The cold
sober truth is, you cannot exaggerate. They haven't made the words.
Talk as extravagantly as you wish to one who will in the most childlike
manner believe every syllable you utter. Then take him into the Big
Country. He will probably say, "Why, you didn't tell me it was going
to be anything like THIS!" We in the East have no standards of
comparison either as regards size or as regards color--especially
color. Some people once directed me to "The Gorge" on the New England
coast. I couldn't find it. They led me to it, and rhapsodized over
its magnificent terror. I could have ridden a horse into the
ridiculous thing. As for color, no Easterner believes in it when such
men as Lungren or Parrish transposit it faithfully, any more than a
Westerner would believe in the autumn foliage of our own hardwoods, or
an Englishman in the glories of our gaudiest sunsets. They are all
true.

In the mountains, the high mountains above the seven or eight thousand
foot level,