Trails 213 
A little ascent, a change in relative position, 
makes an astonishing difference in the appear- 
ance of a range. A mountain landscape, in 
fact, is not one but myriad. It is a hundred 
landscapes from a hundred points of view. 
Hence the delights and surprises of the trail. 
I own all I see, riding over the mountains; 
but every now and again it appears in a 
different light or from a new point of view. 
By early morning light the range has one as- 
pect; by the glare of noon another; at sunset 
a different world again. In a day’s ride the 
trail leads insensibly from one to the next and 
the sensitive eye receives from each its pecu- 
liar set of impressions. 
To ascend is to be continually enlarging 
the world. Each hundred or thousand feet 
permits you to see over some ridge that inter- 
rupted the vision below. The horizon con- 
tinues to recede. It is bounded first by a 
range in yellow and red, hard in outline, sav- 
age in colour, and perhaps ten miles away; 
presently by one softer and more radiant, 
which reflects rather than absorbs light— 
a twenty-mile limit; again by the fine deep 
blue and purple of more distant ranges; then 
by the ethereal azure hills of the fifty- to 
seventy-mile circle; lastly by those pallid 
