48 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



range, even the individual peak, must be seen afar, then 

 nearer with the play of different lights upon it, then 

 skirted, perhaps, to observe its varying contours (for the 

 beautiful mountain, like the perfect statue, must give 

 pleasure from any angle), before it becomes ultimate, 

 familiar, and ready to disclose its secrets. So we 

 travelled up the northward road, over the rolling 

 prairie where gaillardias, blue lupine, orange paintbrush, 

 lavender, bergamot, and many other flowers growing 

 thickly in the grass made the treeless slopes one vast 

 expanse of magic carpet, and the blue range marched 

 with us, wearing its upper snowfields like shoulder 

 mantles and thrusting out rock buttresses to our feet, 

 red and brown and green and gold with the colours we 

 were soon to know so well. 



Now and then, as a canon opened westward toward 

 the main ridge of the Continental Divide, we saw a lake 

 embosomed, and now and then arose some peak of pe- 

 culiar dignity which captured our admiration. It is 

 odd how potent over the spirit are certain contours. 

 The span of the Brooklyn Bridge whispers of infinity and 

 holds the same beauty as the misty view down the 

 Lower Bay where the great ships go out to sea. The 

 span of the Williamsburg Bridge is so ugly that nobody 

 looks at it a second time. Mountains are seldom so 

 ugly as that, but it is only the rare summit which 

 sweeps up in dome-like serenity and seems a symbol of 

 the infinite. Such a mountain is old Rising Wolf, be- 



