TACOMA AND THE INDIAN LEGEND OF HAMITCHOU 



So I clambered on till near noon. 



I had been following thus for many hours the blind 

 path, harsh, darksome, and utterly lonely, urging 

 on with no outlook, encountering no landmark, at 

 last, as I stormed a ragged crest, gaining a height that 

 overtopped the firs, and, halting there for panting 

 moments, glanced to see if I had achieved mastery as 

 well as position, as I looked somewhat wearily 

 and drearily across the solemn surges of forest, sud- 

 denly above their sombre green appeared Tacoma. 

 Large and neighbor it stood, so near that every jewel 

 of its snow-fields seemed to send me a separate ray ; 

 yet not so near but that I could with one look take 

 in its whole image, from clear-cut edge to edge. 



All around it the dark evergreens rose like a ruff ; 

 above them the mountain splendors swelled statelier 

 for the contrast. Sunlight of noon was so refulgent 

 upon the crown, and lay so thick and dazzling in nooks 

 and chasms, that the eye sought repose of gentler 

 lights, and found it in shadowed nooks and clefts, where, 

 sunlight entering not, delicate mist, an emanation 

 from the blue sky, had fallen, and lay sheltered and 

 tremulous, a mild substitute for the stronger glory. 

 The blue haze so wavered and trembled into sunlight, 

 and sunbeams shot glimmering over snowy brinks so 

 like a constant avalanche, that I might doubt whether 

 this movement and waver and glimmer, this blending 

 of mist with noontide flame, were not a drifting smoke 

 and cloud of yellow sulphurous vapor floating over 

 some slowly chilling crater far down in the red crevices. 



But if the giant fires had ever burned under that 

 cold summit, they had long since gone out. The dome 

 that swelled up passionately had crusted over and then 

 fallen in upon itself, not vigorous enough with internal 

 life to bear up in smooth proportion. Where it broke 

 into ruin was no doubt a desolate waste, stern, craggy, 

 and riven, but such drear results of Titanic convulsion 

 the gentle snows hid from view. 



37 



fe&J 



