The desolation and remoteness were indescribable 



By A. O. Wheeler 



alleged experiences of actually bring- 

 ing down this waif of the highest hills. 

 The smoke from cigars, the light from 

 candelabras and the air fragrant with 

 notes of the "Blue Danube" or "Hia- 

 watha," that is one thing. The peaks, 

 the awful heights and thin air, the ex- 

 citement, worry, and probable failure 

 after days and nights, are quite an- 

 other. Here is a picture of Dan on 

 such a quest, far up the side of Mt. 

 Field. Sore and bruised already by a 

 day of tramping, always in danger of 

 falling and fracturing a limb, he has 

 summoned all his courage for a su- 

 preme effort. He climbs, climbs, 

 climbs, until his heart beats ominously, 

 and his legs almost refuse to obey the 

 stern will. He sinks beside a mass of 

 mountain boulders, and wonders if that 

 rifle does not weigh fifty pounds in- 



stead of nine. He has been ascending 

 three hours through the golden sun- 

 shine ; yet before him are at least five 

 hours more of climbing, with a good 

 prospect of falling down some cliff and 

 breaking his neck ; for the hillsides have 

 no trail. Along the skirt of the patch 

 of spruces and white birch, he sees a 

 sheep with a royal pair of horns. The 

 animal is two thousand feet above him. 

 Glacier water flows in rills and forms 

 a stream whose low hiss . comes to him 

 to stimulate his courage ! He can not 

 face the raillery at home ; he must not 

 lie to his wife more than three thou- 

 sand miles away, — and he dreads to ad- 

 mit he has returned, after all this ex- 

 pense and effort, with no head of a 

 sheep to show his friends as they gather 

 with him in that dining-room on the 

 Riverside Drive in New York. Now 



46 



