Camping and Hunting in the Shoshone 



this chasm is alone worth a journey, and 

 of it I wish to speak. Sheer from the 

 water, without one break on its face, a 

 silvery cliff, looking almost south, rises 

 five thousand feet into the sky. I do not 

 know, I am ashamed to say, the nature 

 of the formation ; but in the sunlight its 

 sheen is most silvery. Opposite it stands 

 a mountain so rocky and precipitous that 

 no man or beast can ascend it ; here and 

 there belted with pine, and as dark as its 

 brother-sentinel is fair. I saw these one 

 early morning in September, when we had 

 turned unwillingly homeward, resisting the 

 strong temptation of a first tracking snow; 

 saw them all crusted and crowned with 

 their first winter icing. As we rode, we 

 were not a mile from their bases, yet these 

 were absolutely invisible, shut out by a solid 

 wall of dense white cloud ; but their heads, 

 for the topmost thousand feet or so, were 

 as clear as sunlight could make them. 



An ordinary hill of less than two thou- 

 sand feet looks Alpine when you are near 

 its base, if that base be hidden in fog and 

 the crown be clear. Many who read this 

 can doubtless recall experiences on misty 

 mornings, when on the canoe, or lake- 

 shore or river-bank, they looked up at 

 cloud-girdled mountains that, when thus 



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