pests, the frosts, the heavy snows, the
coaxing sun, and the avalanches have had their way with it until its
surface is in hopeless confusion. We made our way very slowly; and it
was ten o'clock before we reached what appeared to be the summit, a
ridge deeply covered with moss, low balsams, and blueberry-bushes.

I say, appeared to be; for we stood in thick fog or in the heart of
clouds which limited our dim view to a radius of twenty feet. It was a
warm and cheerful fog, stirred by little wind, but moving, shifting, and
boiling as by its own volatile nature, rolling up black from below and
dancing in silvery splendor overhead As a fog it could not have been
improved; as a medium for viewing the landscape it was a failure and we
lay down upon the Sybarite couch of moss, as in a Russian bath, to await
revelations.

We waited two hours without change, except an occasional hopeful
lightness in the fog above, and at last the appearance for a moment
of the spectral sun. Only for an instant was this luminous promise
vouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement. There it was again;
and this time the fog was so thin overhead that we caught sight of a
patch of blue sky a yard square, across which the curtain was instantly
drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the fog boiled up from the valley
caldrons thicker than ever. But the spell was broken. In a moment more
Old Phelps was shouting, "The sun!" and before we could gain our feet
there was a patch of sky overhead as big as a farm. "See! quick!" The
old man was dancing like a lunatic. There was a rift in the vapor at
our feet, down, down, three thousand feet into the forest abyss, and lo!
lifting out of it yonder the tawny side of Dix,--the vision of a second,
snatched away in the rolling fog. The play had just begun. Before
we could turn, there was the gorge of Caribou Pass, savage and dark,
visible to the bottom. The opening shut as suddenly; and then, looking
over the clouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms of the Au Sable
Valley, and in a moment more the plateau of North Elba and the sentinel
mountains about the grave of John Brown. These glimpses were as fleeting
as thought, and instantly we were again isolated in the sea of mist. The
expectation of these sudden strokes of sublimity kept us exultingly
on the alert; and yet it was a blow of surprise when the curtain was
swiftly withdrawn on the west, and the long ridge of Colvin, seemingly
within a stone's throw,