heaved up like an island out of the ocean,
and was the next moment ingulfed. We waited longer for Dix to show its
shapely peak and its glistening sides of rock gashed by avalanches. The
fantastic clouds, torn and streaming, hurried up from the south in haste
as if to a witch's rendezvous, hiding and disclosing the great summit
in their flight. The mist boiled up from the valley, whirled over the
summit where we stood, and plunged again into the depths. Objects were
forming and disappearing, shifting and dancing, now in sun and now gone
in fog, and in the elemental whirl we felt that we were "assisting" in
an original process of creation. The sun strove, and his very striving
called up new vapors; the wind rent away the clouds, and brought new
masses to surge about us; and the spectacle to right and left, above
and below, changed with incredible swiftness. Such glory of abyss and
summit, of color and form and transformation, is seldom granted to
mortal eyes. For an hour we watched it until our vast mountain was
revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, its abysses and its savagery,
and the great basins of wilderness with their shining lakes, and the
giant peaks of the region, were one by one disclosed, and hidden and
again tranquil in the sunshine.

Where was the cave? There was ample surface in which to look for it. If
we could have flitted about, like the hawks that came circling round,
over the steep slopes, the long spurs, the jagged precipices, I have no
doubt we should have found it. But moving about on this mountain is not
a holiday pastime; and we were chiefly anxious to discover a practicable
mode of descent into the great wilderness basin on the south, which we
must traverse that afternoon before reaching the hospitable shanty
on Mud Pond. It was enough for us to have discovered the general
whereabouts of the Spanish Cave, and we left the fixing of its exact
position to future explorers.

The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in the distance; but we
found it bristling with obstructions, dead balsams set thickly together,
slashes of fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos; and when
at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge to the general slope, we
exchanged only for more disagreeable going. The slope for a couple of
thousand feet was steep enough; but it was formed of granite rocks all
moss-covered, so that the footing could not be determined, and at short
intervals we nearly went out of sigh