the earth with their
missiles and deafen the skies with their thunder? And what daring of
man is this to scorn his smiling valleys and adventure up into these
realms of storm? No Titan he, yet the truest Titan of all, for he
wrestled and overcame. No giant he, yet grander than the giants, since
without Pelion or Ossa he has scaled heaven. Through uncounted aeons
the mountain has been gathering its forces. Frost and snow and ice and
the willing winds have been its sworn retainers. Cold and famine and
death it flaunted in the face of the besieger. Man is of a day, and the
elements are but slippery allies. A spade and a compass are his meagre
weapons; yet man has conquered. The struggle was long, with many a
reconnaissance and partial triumph, but at length the victory is
complete. Man has placed his hand on the monarch's mane. He has
pierced leviathan with a hook. The secrets of the mountain are
uncovered. His fastnesses conceal no treasures that shall not be
spread out to the day. His bolts and bars of ice can no longer press
back the foot of the invader. Yon gray and slender ribbon, that floats
down his defiles, disappearing now over his ledges to reappear on some
lower range, and he lightly across the plateau,--that is his bridle of
submission, his badge of servitude. Obedient to that, he yields up his
hoarded wealth and pays tribute, a vassal to his lord. Men and women
and little children climb up his rugged sides, and the crown upon his
beetling brows is set in the circle of humanity.

In the first depression of abandonment one loses heart, and sees only
the abomination of desolation; but gradually the soul lifts itself from
the barren earth, and floats out upon the ocean, in which one stands
islanded on a gray rock, fixed in seas of sunshine.

Whether you shall have a fair day or a foul is as may be. At the
mountain's base they discreetly promise you nothing. It may be sunny
and sultry down there, while storms and floods have at it on the peak.
But mine was a day of days,--clear, alternating with cloudy. When you
had looked long enough to dazzle and weary your eyes, a cloud would
come and fold you about with opaqueness, and while you waited in the
cloud, lo here! lo there! it flashed apart and shimmered yonder a blue
sky, a brilliant landscape, and the distant level of the sea; or slowly
its whiteness cleaved and rolled away, revealing a glorified mountain,
a lake lying in the shadows, or the simpl