218 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
The ap- 
proaches to 
mountains. 
Seen from a 
distance. 
rises abruptly from the surrounding country. 
The fold has usually left its mark for hundreds 
of miles on either side of the chain, and the 
ascent to the topmost peaks is made by a 
gradual rise from the plains to the table-lands, 
and from these to the foot-hills, so that fre- 
quently the mountain-climber finds himself 
thousands of feet above sea-level before the 
outlines of the ridge appear at all. This is not, 
of course, true of the Alps, where the deep 
valleys enable one to come to the base of Mt. 
Blanc, for instance, and see the mountain itself 
towering twelve thousand feet higher up ; but 
it is quite true of the Rocky Mountains, espe- 
cially in the Montana region. The ascent is 
gradual from the prairie ‘ divides,” which one 
thinks of (erroneously, no doubt) as the little 
wrinkles of the earth’s surface, through table- 
lands and foot-hills covered with vegetation and 
cut by beautiful valleys. The hills near at 
hand are bright green, but they grow bluer and 
the valley shadows paler as they recede from us, 
and oftentimes in clear weather one can see far 
away, beyond the timber-crowned slopes of the 
foot-hills, the faint gray silhouette of the high 
mountain-ridge, almost lost inthe blue of the sky. 
The fold of the earth crust is usually a long one. 
