234 EAST PRUSSIA TO THE GOLDEN GATE 



led us along the edge of a precipice several hundred feet 

 deep, and I may say that from here— though we were high 

 up in the mountains— we for the first time gazed upon the 

 grand, gloomy giants of the Sierra Nevada and her aerial 

 glaciers. There was not one among us but stood for the 

 moment awed, on beholding the picture thus suddenly un- 

 folded before our eyes. Standing as we did on the top 

 of an almost bald mountain, we could with one glance 

 take in the whole panorama ; the deep valleys in the fore- 

 ground, densely wooded with dark firs, whose tops were 

 many hundred feet below us; the tangle of chasm and 

 precipices beyond— some of the latter nearly bare, others 

 covered with a growth of brushwood and stunted firs; 

 the sides of the mountains furrowed by numberless ra- 

 vines and gulches, and beyond this and towering high 

 above it all, the mighty giants themselves, rising high 

 above the line of vegetation, their sharp peaks glittering 

 with eternal snow and ice— standing out frozen and clear 

 through the blue atmosphere. A cold breeze came as if 

 in waves from the other side of the valley. We had 

 reached the margin of the snow line. 



I have not attempted to give you anything like an ade- 

 quate description in detail of the panorama before me, 

 nor to tell you what I felt in looking at it. I could not 

 do either; not the first, because I could not grasp any 

 single feature myself; I had eyes for the whole only; I 

 saw only the clefts, the mighty mountains, the snow — 

 and I could not do the second, because— smile at me if 

 you will— I cannot find words to do so. 



From here we began to descend again, and soon the 

 dense, dark forest prevented a look in the distance. It 

 was more a tumbling down than an orderly descent, and 

 at times I really thought that our wagon would get to 

 the bottom ahead of the oxen. At the foot of the moun- 

 tain—at the "Lexington House"— we were told that ow- 

 ing to the bad condition of the road, we would barely be 

 able to reach the next loghouse— the "Deadwood House" 

 —3 miles distant— a great disappointment to us, as we 

 had been in hopes of reaching Grass Valley, distant about 



