crags and rocks, a black and sullen brook that
gurgled with a hollow voice deep among the crevices, a wood of mossy
distorted trees and prostrate trunks flung down by age and storms,
scattered among the rocks, or damming the foaming waters of the little
brook. The objects were the same, yet they were thrown into a wilder and
more startling scene, for the black crags and the savage trees assumed
a grim and threatening aspect, and close across the valley the opposing
mountain confronted me, rising from the gulf for thousands of feet, with
its bare pinnacles and its ragged covering of pines. Yet the scene was
not without its milder features. As I ascended, I found frequent little
grassy terraces, and there was one of these close at hand, across which
the brook was stealing, beneath the shade of scattered trees that seemed
artificially planted. Here I made a welcome discovery, no other than a
bed of strawberries, with their white flowers and their red fruit, close
nestled among the grass by the side of the brook, and I sat down by
them, hailing them as old acquaintances; for among those lonely and
perilous mountains they awakened delicious associations of the gardens
and peaceful homes of far-distant New England.

Yet wild as they were, these mountains were thickly peopled. As I
climbed farther, I found the broad dusty paths made by the elk, as
they filed across the mountainside. The grass on all the terraces was
trampled down by deer; there were numerous tracks of wolves, and in
some of the rougher and more precipitous parts of the ascent, I found
foot-prints different from any that I had ever seen, and which I took to
be those of the Rocky Mountain sheep. I sat down upon a rock; there was
a perfect stillness. No wind was stirring, and not even an insect could
be heard. I recollected the danger of becoming lost in such a place,
and therefore I fixed my eye upon one of the tallest pinnacles of the
opposite mountain. It rose sheer upright from the woods below, and by an
extraordinary freak of nature sustained aloft on its very summit a large
loose rock. Such a landmark could never be mistaken, and feeling once
more secure, I began again to move forward. A white wolf jumped up
from among some bushes, and leaped clumsily away; but he stopped for a
moment, and turned back his keen eye and his grim bristling muzzle. I
longed to take his scalp and carry it back with me, as an appropriate
trophy of the Black Hills, but before I cou