MOUNT RAINIER 



I had not long, that noon of August, from the top 

 of La Tete, to study Tacoma, scene of Hamitchou's 

 wild legend. Humanity forbade dalliance. While I 

 fed my soul with sublimity, Klale and his comrades 

 were wretched with starvation. But the summit of 

 the pass is near. A few struggles more, Klale the 

 plucky, and thy empty sides shall echo less drum-like. 

 Up stoutly, my steeds ; up a steep but little less than 

 perpendicular, paw over these last trunks of the barri- 

 cades in our trail, and ye have won ! 



So it was. The angle of our ascent suddenly broke 

 down from ninety to fifteen, then to nothing. We 

 had reached the plateau. Here were the first prairies. 

 Nibble in these, my nags, for a few refreshing moments, 

 and then on to superlative dinners in lovelier spots 

 just beyond. 



Let no one, exaggerating the joys of campaigning, 

 with Horace's "Militia potior est," deem that there 

 is no compensating pang among them. Is it a pleas- 

 ant thing, O traveller only in dreams, envier of the 

 voyager in reality, to urge tired, reluctant, and unfed 

 mustangs up a mountain pass, even for their own good ? 

 In such a case a man, the humanest and gentlest, must 

 adopt the manners of a brute. He must ply the whip, 

 and that cruelly ; otherwise, no go. At first, as he 

 smites, he winces, for he has struck his own sensibil- 

 ities ; by and by he hardens himself, and thrashes 

 without a tremor. When the cortege arrives at an 

 edible prairie, gastronomic satisfaction will put Lethean 

 freshness in the battered hide of every horse. 



We presently turned just aside from the trail into an 

 episode of beautiful prairie, one of a succession along 

 the plateau at the crest of the range. At this height 

 of about five thousand feet, the snows remain until 

 June. In this fair, oval, forest-circled prairie of my 

 nooning, the grass was long and succulent, as if it 

 grew in the bed of a drained lake. The horses, un- 

 dressed, were allowed to plunge and wallow in the deep 



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