ain. At last we stood in the
mighty notch of the summit, through which the wind rushed as though
hurrying to some far-off, deep-hidden vacuum in the world. The peaks
of the mountains were lost in clouds out of which water fell in
vicious slashes.

The mist set the imagination free. The pinnacles around us were like
those which top the Valley of Desolation. We seemed each moment about
to plunge into ladderless abysses. Nothing ever imagined by Poe or
Dore could be more singular, more sinister, than these summits in
such a light, in such a storm. It might serve as the scene for an
exiled devil. The picture of Beelzebub perched on one of those gray,
dimly seen crags, his form outlined in the mist, would shake the
heart. I thought of "Peer Gynt" wandering in the high home of the
Trolls. Crags beetled beyond crags, and nothing could be heard but
the wild waters roaring in the obscure depths beneath our feet. There
was no sky, no level place, no growing thing, no bird or beast,--only
crates of bones to show where some heartless master had pushed a
faithful horse up these terrible heights to his death.

And here--just here in a world of crags and mist--I heard a shout of
laughter, and then bursting upon my sight, strong-limbed, erect, and
full-bosomed, appeared a girl. Her face was like a rain-wet rose--a
splendid, unexpected flower set in this dim and gray and desolate
place. Fearlessly she fronted me to ask the way, a laugh upon her
lips, her big gray eyes confident of man's chivalry, modest and
sincere. I had been so long among rude men and their coarse consorts
that this fair woman lit the mist as if with sudden sunshine--just a
moment and was gone. There were others with her, but they passed
unnoticed. There in the gloom, like a stately pink rose, I set the
Girl of the Mist.

Sheep Camp was the end of the worst portion of the trail. I had now
crossed both the famed passes, much improved of course. They are no
longer dangerous (a woman in good health can cross them easily), but
they are grim and grievous ways. They reek of cruelty and every
association that is coarse and hard. They possess a peculiar value to
me in that they throw into fadeless splendor the wealth, the calm,
the golden sunlight which lay upon the proud beauty of Atlin Lake.

The last hours of the trip formed a supreme test of endurance. At
Sheep Camp, a wet and desolate shanty town, eight miles from Dyea, we
came upon stages just starting over our roa