CHAPTER IX 



TIMBER-LINE AND SUMMIT 



One-Eyed Men in the Mountains — A Mountain Savant — A Climb in 

 False Notch — Foot and Nerve Exhaustion — A Daring Goat — Ex- 

 periments — The Component Parts of Mountain-Sides — Tempera- 

 ture Record of a Climber — A Great Basin and a Bull Elk — A Tree 

 Scarred by a Mountain Ram. 



"Here in this workshop of the Sun, 



Where Nature hews, and chips recoil. 

 Note well the work designed, or done ; 

 Behold the Mountains at their toil!" 



— The Sun's Workshop. 



The world is full of one-eyed travellers. One of the 

 strange things about such mountains as those of British 

 Columbia is the wide variation between the impressions 

 which they produce upon different people. I know a 

 miner and prospector to whom the finest mountain-range 

 is merely a place in which to look for signs of ore. 

 There are sportsmen who see nothing in mountains save 

 what appears over the sights of their rifles. There are 

 photographers who see nature only as it is revealed in 

 their " finder," " stopped down to aperture No. 32, one- 

 twenty-fifth of a second exposure." 



Before me at this moment there lies a book about 

 mountains; but it is only a book of heights and depths, 



scaled or to be scaled. Its author was blind to the glories 



1Z7 



