e bright St. Vrain and other streams
take their rise. I thought how their clear cold waters, growing turbid
in the affluent flats, would heat under the tropic sun, and eventually
form part of that great ocean river which renders our far-off islands
habitable by impinging on their shores. Snowy ranges, one behind the
other, extended to the distant horizon, folding in their wintry embrace
the beauties of Middle Park. Pike's Peak, more than one hundred miles
off, lifted that vast but shapeless summit which is the landmark of
southern Colorado. There were snow patches, snow slashes, snow
abysses, snow forlorn and soiled looking, snow pure and dazzling, snow
glistening above the purple robe of pine worn by all the mountains;
while away to the east, in limitless breadth, stretched the green-grey
of the endless Plains. Giants everywhere reared their splintered
crests. From thence, with a single sweep, the eye takes in a distance
of 300 miles--that distance to the west, north, and south being made up
of mountains ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen thousand feet in height,
dominated by Long's Peak, Gray's Peak, and Pike's Peak, all nearly the
height of Mont Blanc! On the Plains we traced the rivers by their
fringe of cottonwoods to the distant Platte, and between us and them
lay glories of mountain, canyon, and lake, sleeping in depths of blue
and purple most ravishing to the eye.

As we crept from the ledge round a horn of rock I beheld what made me
perfectly sick and dizzy to look at--the terminal Peak itself--a
smooth, cracked face or wall of pink granite, as nearly perpendicular
as anything could well be up which it was possible to climb, well
deserving the name of the "American Matterhorn." [14]

[14] Let no practical mountaineer be allured by my description into the
ascent of Long's Peak. Truly terrible as it was to me, to a member of
the Alpine Club it would not be a feat worth performing.

SCALING, not climbing, is the correct term for this last ascent. It
took one hour to accomplish 500 feet, pausing for breath every minute
or two. The only foothold was in narrow cracks or on minute
projections on the granite. To get a toe in these cracks, or here and
there on a scarcely obvious projection, while crawling on hands and
knees, all the while tortured with thirst and gasping and struggling
for breath, this was the climb; but at last the Peak was won. A grand,
well-defined mountain top it is, a nearly level ac