trees, and welcomed in the new year by the light of its leaping flames.

They had passed through vast tracts of wonderful fertility and beauty,
unknown to white men, and through regions abounding in game that they
had no time to hunt. From the summit of the Aztec Pass they had gazed,
with dismay, over the boundless expanse of the Black Forest, and then
had plunged into its dark depths. They had threaded their way through
labyrinths of precipitous canons, the walls of which rose thousands of
feet above their heads, and had known of others still more tremendous.

They had waded through the snows of the San Francisco Mountains, and
revelled in the warmth and beauty of the superb Val de Chino, where snow
and ice are unknown. They had dodged the crashing boulders hurled down
on them in Union Pass by the Hualapi Indians, posted on the inaccessible
heights far above them. Here they had lost a wagon, crushed to splinters
by one of these masses of rock; but no lives had been sacrificed, and
their number was still the same as when they left the Rio Grande. Now
they were on the bank of the Colorado, with only one desert and one
range of mountains yet to cross. These seemed so little, after all they
had gone through; and yet that desert alone was two hundred and fifty
miles wide. Two hundred and fifty miles of sand, sage-brush, and alkali;
the most barren region of country within the limits of the United
States. If they could have looked ahead and seen what the crossing of
that desert meant, they would have entered upon the undertaking with
heavy hearts and but faint hopes of accomplishing it. How fortunate it
is that we cannot look ahead and see the trials that await us. We would
never dare face them if they should all appear to us at once; while, by
meeting them singly, and attacking them one by one, they are overcome
with comparative ease.

But neither Glen nor his companions were thinking of the trials ahead of
them as they came in sight of the Colorado River. They were only
thinking of those left behind, and what a glorious thing it was to have
got thus far along in their tremendous journey. The transit-party had
run their line to the river's bank and gone to camp a mile or so below,
when the levellers came up, and Glen held his rod, for a final reading,
at the water's edge.

He had just noted the figures in his book, and waved an "All right" to
"Billy" Brackett, when he was startled by a rush of hoofs and a joyous
shout. T