194 Rocky Mountains and Oregon. 
chasm ; and, according to the barometer, we had attained but a few 
hundred feet above the Island lake. The barometer here stood at 
ce] 
20-450, attached thermometer 70°. 
with angular, sharp fragments of rock, three or four and eight or ten 
feet cube; and among these they had worked their way, leaping from 
one narrow point to another, rarely making a false step, and giving us 
no occasion to dismount. Having divested ourselves of every unne- 
cessary encumbrance, we commenced the ascent. This time, like ex- 
perienced travellers, we did not press ourselves, but climbed leisurely, 
sitting down so soon as we found breath beginning to fail. At inter- 
on a light thin pair, which I had brought for the purpose, as now the 
use of our toes became necessary toa further advance. I availed my- 
self of a sort of comb of the mountain, which stood against the wall 
like a buttress, and which the wind and the solar radiation, joined to the 
steepness of the smooth rock, had kept almost entirely free from snow. 
Up this 1 made my way rapidly. Our cautious method of advancing 
in the outset had spared my strength; and, with the exception of a 
slight disposition to headache, I felt no remains of yesterday’s illness. 
In a few minutes we reached a point where the buttress was overhang- 
ing, and there was no other way of surmounting the difficulty than by 
passing around one side of it, which was the face of a vertical preci- 
ice of several hundred feet. 
_.“ Putting hands and feet in the crevices between the blocks, I succeed- 
ed in getting over it, and, when I reached the top, found my compan- 
lons in a small valley below. Descending to them, we continued climb- 
ing, and in a short time reached the crest. I sprang upon the suminit, 
and another step would have precipitated me into an immense snow 
field five hundred feet below. To the edge of this field was a sheer 
icy precipice; and then, with a gradual fall, the field sloped off for 
about a mile, until it struck the foot of another lower ridge. I stood on 
a narrow crest, about three feet in width, with an inclination of about 
20°, N. 51° E. As soon as I had gratified the first feelings of curiosi- 
ed before. During our morning’s ascent, we had met no sign of ani- 
mal life, except the small sparrow-like bird already mentioned. 
stillness the most profound and a terrible solitude forced themselves 
constantly on the mind as the great features of the place. Here, on 
he summit, where the stillness was absolute, unbroken by any sound, 
and the solitude complete, we thought ourselves beyond the region of 
