FIRST AS GEM 1 OF THE MGTMTAIH OF THE HOLY GROSS 
Until the middle of June the great front range of the 
Rocky Mountains had been crowned with an unbroken covering of 
snow, and the higher peaks looked forbidding enough to cool the 
ardor of the most ambitious mountaineer* We spent a few months 
on the plains and pine-covered foot-hills watching,impatiently, 
the faces of the mountain* We marked how the snow line moved 
gradually upward, how the black rocks began to peep out making 
innumerable black patches, and how the snow finally occupied 
only small areas where it had filled depressions and accumulated 
in deep drifts. Our little party was not slow to take advan¬ 
tage of this growing weakness in our enemy T s front and steadily 
advanced up the valleys, into dense timber, up long, steep slopes, 
through swamps and torrents and treacherous snowbanks; and long 
before the grass and flowers of those upper regions had felt the 
touch of spring, we were there. And many days before winter 
had finally surrendered the lofty summits, from a peak more than 
14,000 feet above the sea we looked around upon one of the grand¬ 
est panoramas that the world affords. To the east the great 
plain gave a horizon entirely unbroken, to the west innumerable 
mountains notched the sky like saw teeth. From the ramparts 
of a continent we looked out upon a boundless ocean, calm, motion¬ 
less, inward, upon a waste of mountains whose heights and depths 
and mystery fairly confounded us. 
This was to be the field of our labors, and we summonded 
our half-bewildered faculties to the task of identifying such 
great landmarks as would be necessary to guide us in our future 
wanderings. An indefinite number of high, ragged ranges could 
be traced by their lines of lofty summits as far away t<p the 
north and south as the eye could reach. But one among all these 
summits caught the eye and fixed the attention. Far away to the 
westward, we discovered a peak, a very giant among its fellows, a 
king amidst a forest of mountains, that bore aloft on its dark 
face a great white cross, so perfect, so grand in proportions that 
at a distance of sixty miles we felt outselves in its very presence. 
Two months later we found ourselves approaching the region 
in which this mountain is located. On the 19th of August we stood 
on the ocean divide, from which the waters to the east are carried 
by the Arkansas down to the Gulf, while those to the west sink 
away and are lost in the mysterious gorges of the "great Colorado 
of the west." On the one side a narrow valley stretched away to 
the southeastward in a seemingly endless vista, while on the other 
the streams and valleys were almost immediately obscured by a mass 
of irregular mountains. The course chosen would lead us first 
down the Pacific slope into a deep and rugged canon which we would 
be compelled to descend for some 20 miles or more, thence by means 
of one of the great creek valleys that come down from the range to 
the west, we hoped to be able to ascend to the base of the peak. 
