62 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



hacked at the top with angular notches, and sepa 

 rated by frosty gullies and recesses that have been 

 veiled in shadow ever since their creation; while 

 to right and left, as far as I could see, were huge, 

 crumbling buttresses, offering no hope to the 

 climber. The head of the glacier sends up a few 

 finger-like branches through narrow couloirs; but 

 these seemed too steep and short to be available, 

 especially as I had no ax with which to cut steps, 

 and the numerous narrow-throated gullies down 

 which stones and snow are avalanched seemed hope 

 lessly steep, besides being interrupted by vertical 

 cliffs ; while the whole front was rendered still more 

 terribly forbidding by the chill shadow and the 

 gloomy blackness of the rocks. 



Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I 

 picked my way across the yawning chasm at the 

 foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There 

 were no meadows now to cheer with their brave 

 colors, nor could I hear the dun-headed sparrows, 

 whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of 

 our highest mountains. The only sounds were the 

 gurgling of small rills down in the veins and cre 

 vasses of the glacier, and now and then the rattling 

 report of falling stones, with the echoes they shot out 

 into the crisp air 



I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit 

 from this side, yet I moved on across the glacier as 

 if driven by fate. Contending with myself, the 

 season is too far spent, I said, and even should I be 

 successful, I might be storm-bound on the moun 

 tain ; and in the cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and 

 crevasses covered with snow, how could I escape ? 



