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Sierra Club Bulletin, 



Kobbe fired from his shot-gun to celebrate the Fourth 

 rang out on the still, cold air with startling distinctness, 

 and were reverberated in indignation from the surround- 

 ing cliifs. Everything was shrouded in the chill gray 

 light of dawn, save where the higher peaks caught the 

 light of the rising sun, and if it were not for the occa- 

 sional chirp of an alpine bird perfect silence reigned. The 

 cheerless aspect of things, the cold, and the poor hungry 

 animals, huddled together for warmth in dejected atti- 

 tudes, did not tend to raise our spirits. 



We hurriedly prepared breakfast, and, packing up 

 as quickly as possible, started at half-past 6. Our course 

 lay over a gently sloping field of hard-frozen snow, 

 which crunched with a substantial sound under the pres- 

 sure of our feet. Two and a half hours steady climb up 

 this slope brought us to the summit of the King's-Kem 

 divide. We had chosen the depression between Crag 

 Ericsson and Leland Stanford Peak, but the discour- 

 aging sight which met our eyes on reaching the summit 

 made us doubt the wisdom of our choice. There at our 

 feet fell off a precipice, impossible of descent even on 

 foot. We were on the precipitous wall of a deep snow 

 amphitheater, out of which flowed one of the branches 

 of the King's River. The whole aspect took in steep bare 

 cliffs, sawtooth ridges, and ragged peaks partly clothed 

 in snow. Below us the greater part of the deep white 

 basin reposed in the morning shadow, but tongues of 

 light were gradually creeping in and dispelling the 

 shadow along its western edge. The scene, to our eyes, 

 seemed saturnine and forbidding, and we longed with 

 the animals for fresh green meadows and shady trees. 

 Not much time was lost, however, in bemoaning our 



