A NEAK VIEW OF THE HIGH SIEKKA , 57 



Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, 

 spiky shadows crept out across the snow-fields, 

 while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradu 

 ally deepened and suffused every mountain-top, 

 flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. 

 This was the alpenglow, to me one of the most im 

 pressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. 

 At the touch of this divine light, the mountains 

 seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, 

 and stood hushed and waiting like devout wor 

 shipers. Just before the alpenglow began to fade, 

 two crimson clouds came streaming across the sum 

 mit like wings of flame, rendering the sublime scene 

 yet more impressive ; then came darkness and the 

 stars. 



Icy Bitter was still miles away, but I could pro 

 ceed no farther that night. I found a good camp 

 ground on the rim of a glacier basin about 11,000 

 feet above the sea. A small lake nestles in the 

 bottom of it, from which I got water for my tea, 

 and a stormbeaten thicket near by furnished 

 abundance of resiny fire-wood. Somber peaks, 

 hacked and shattered, circled half-way around the 

 horizon, wearing a savage aspect in the gloaming, 

 and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on 

 its way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall 

 and the lake and the glacier were almost equally 

 bare ; while the scraggy pines anchored in the rock- 

 fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm- winds 

 that you might walk over their tops. In tone and 

 aspect the scene was one of the most desolate I ever 

 beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the moun 

 tains are illumined with bright passages of love 



