Glenora Peak 



growing up to three to four thousand feet, and at the 

 summit a dwarf species, with dusky, hairy involu- 

 cres, and a few ferns, aspidium, gymnogramma, and 

 small rock cheilanthes, leaving scarce a foot of ground 

 bare, though the mountain looks bald and brown in 

 the distance like those of the desert ranges of the 

 Great Basin in Utah and Nevada. 



Charmed with these plant people, I had almost 

 forgotten to watch the sky until I reached the top of 

 the highest peak, when one of the greatest and most 

 impressively sublime of all the mountain views I have 

 ever enjoyed came full in sight more than three 

 hundred miles of closely packed peaks of the great 

 Coast Range, sculptured in the boldest manner im- 

 aginable, their naked tops and dividing ridges dark in 

 color, their sides and the canons, gorges, and valleys 

 between them loaded with glaciers and snow. From 

 this standpoint I counted upwards of two hundred 

 glaciers, while dark-centred luminous clouds with 

 fringed edges hovered and crawled over them, now 

 slowly descending, casting transparent shadows on 

 the ice and snow, now rising high above them, linger- 

 ing like loving angels guarding the crystal gifts they 

 had bestowed. Although the range as seen from this 

 Glenora mountain-top seems regular in its trend, as 

 if the main axis were simple and continuous, it is, on 

 the contrary, far from simple. In front of the highest 

 ranks of peaks are others of the same form with their 

 own glaciers, and lower peaks before these, and yet 

 lower ones with their ridges and canons, valleys and 

 foothills. Alps rise beyond alps as far as the eye can 



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