MOUNT RAINIER 



we passed a most miserable night, freezing on one side, 

 and in a hot steam-sulphur-bath on the other. 



The dawn at last slowly broke, cold and gray. The 

 tempest howled still wilder. As it grew light, dense 

 masses of driven mist went sweeping by overhead and 

 completely hid the sun, and enveloped the mountain so 

 as to conceal objects scarce a hundred feet distant. 

 We watched and waited with great anxiety, fearing 

 a storm which might detain us there for days without 

 food or shelter, or, worse yet, snow, which would render 

 the descent more perilous, or most likely impossible. 

 And when, at nine A.M., an occasional rift in the driving 

 mist gave a glimpse of blue sky, we made haste to de- 

 scend. First, however, I deposited the brass plate 

 inscribed with our names in a cleft in a large bowlder 

 on the highest summit, a huge mount of rocks on 

 the east side of our crater of refuge, which we named 

 Crater Peak, placed the canteen alongside, and 

 covered it with a large stone. I was then literally 

 freezing in the cold, piercing blast, and was glad to 

 hurry back to the crater, breathless and benumbed. 



We left our den of refuge at length, after exercising 

 violently to start the blood through our limbs, and, in 

 attempting to pass around the rocky summit, discov- 

 ered a second crater, larger than the first, perhaps three 

 hundred yards in diameter. It is circular, filled with a 

 bed of snow, with a rocky rim all around and numerous 

 jets of steam issuing from the rocks on the northern 

 side. Both craters are inclined the first to the 

 west, and the latter to the east with a much steeper 

 inclination, about thirty degrees. The rim of the 

 second crater is higher, or the snow-field inside lower, 

 than that of the first, and upon the east side rises in a 

 rocky wall thirty feet above the snow within. From 

 the summit we obtained a view of the northern peak, 

 still partially enveloped in the driving mist. It ap- 

 peared about a mile distant, several hundred feet lower 

 than the center peak, and separated from it by a deeper, 



