A Knapsack Trip to Mt. Ritter. 303 



tuft of green appeared, and announced that there we 

 would camp. With rebelHon in her heart, but, true to 

 principles, still obedient^ silently and doggedly the last 

 pilgrim resumed her pack and trudged along after him. 

 As she climbed slowly and reluctantly out of that cheer- 

 ful valley she felt in her bones that the long-trusted judg- 

 ment of her heretofore reliable leader was at last going 

 to be proved at fault. No reasonable being could expect 

 to find wood, shelter, or anything but snov/ and bitter 

 winds in the high, bleak resting-place he had selected. 



Among the many joys of a knapsack day there is one 

 black hour, — that cold, dismal hour before dinner, when 

 the campfires have not yet blazed up to the comfort of 

 overheated backs and snow-soaked feet; when one is 

 hungry, dirty, and tired, and when one's unvoiced convic- 

 tion that the camp-site mentally picked out a few miles 

 back on the trail was the proper end to the day's toil is 

 confirmed by a hundred fancied shortcomings in the 

 chosen spot. At the first glimpse there was little 

 to lighten the gloom of that hour, — a narrow, rocky 

 bench scarcely a hundred feet wide, a few juniper trees, 

 a stream just broken out from the ice, and an enormous, 

 dreary expanse of snowfield rising from our feet to the 

 very skyline. But with the Hfting of the ante-dinner 

 mood the last pilgrim was grudgingly forced to admit 

 that the leader had been provokingly right, as usual, and 

 that a camp boasting the shelter of living trees, an 

 abundance of dry wood, a stream of water, and luxurious 

 beds of bryanthus was equal to the marshy charms of 

 the canon bottom. 



Surely no camp could have been more beautiful. The 

 long, twilit cafion lay below us under the darkening sky ; 

 close beside us rose the towering mass of Ritter, whose 

 rippled snowfields were radiant with the sunset glow 

 long after it had faded from all else but a band of light 

 clouds floating above it. As the gray shadows crept up 

 from the cafions towards the mountain top they were met 



