xpecting nothing better than a shakedown; but, to my joy, he told me
he could give me a cabin to myself, two minutes' walk from his own. So
in this glorious upper world, with the mountain pines behind and the
clear lake in front, in the "blue hollow at the foot of Long's Peak,"
at a height of 7,500 feet, where the hoar frost crisps the grass every
night of the year, I have found far more than I ever dared to hope for.

[13] A corral is a fenced enclosure for cattle. This word, with
bronco, ranch, and a few others, are adaptations from the Spanish, and
are used as extensively throughout California and the Territories as is
the Spanish or Mexican saddle.

I. L. B.

Letter VII

Personality of Long's Peak--"Mountain Jim"--Lake of the Lilies--A
silent forest--The camping ground--"Ring"--A lady's bower--Dawn and
sunrise--A glorious view--Links of diamonds--The ascent of the
Peak--The "Dog's Lift"--Suffering from thirst--The descent--The bivouac.

ESTES PARK, COLORADO, October.

As this account of the ascent of Long's Peak could not be written at
the time, I am much disinclined to write it, especially as no sort of
description within my powers could enable another to realize the
glorious sublimity, the majestic solitude, and the unspeakable
awfulness and fascination of the scenes in which I spent Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Long's Peak, 14,700 feet high, blocks up one end of Estes Park, and
dwarfs all the surrounding mountains. From it on this side rise,
snow-born, the bright St. Vrain, and the Big and Little Thompson. By
sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object
which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly
arrests the eyes. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the
forked lightnings play round its head like a glory. It is one of the
noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more
than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality. In its
caverns and abysses one comes to fancy that it generates and chains the
strong winds, to let them loose in its fury. The thunder becomes its
voice, and the lightnings do it homage. Other summits blush under the
morning kiss of the sun, and turn pale the next moment; but it detains
the first sunlight and holds it round its head for an hour at least,
till it pleases to change from rosy red to deep blue; and the sunset,
as if spell-bou