river brink on a little grassy meadow that 
has very striking surroundings. Opposite 
the creek, namely, rises to a point a perpen¬ 
dicular precipice full 1,500 feet high by 
measurement, and offering a conspicuous ge¬ 
ological section on its whole face; at the 
bottom the old and heavy-bedded silurian 
limestone; above it sandstones and conglom¬ 
erates, in red beds beneath and white beds 
toward the top—it is as yet doubtful whether 
all carboniferous^in age, or rising into the 
trias. Even the chiefs of the survey have 
hardly seen a finer exhibition of geologic 
structure. The rim is bordered along dow 
on the east side with precipices' semewha. 
similar; and just before sunset this evening 
we had an almost magical scene : the su- 
breaking out under the heavy cloud anu 
tinging their summits with a misty light that 
was half brilliant, half lurid ; and at t' 
same time spanning the highest and near* 
with a beautiful rainbow. 
The Eagle river is not destitute of trout, 
of a very respectable size. Three or four of 
j about or above two pounds’ weight have been 
i taken this afternoon ; and one, the largest, 
I which was opened, had a whole entomologi¬ 
cal collection in his maw, of which the 
! largest item was twenty-seven undigested 
grasshoppers. There were with them the 
partly digested materials of twice as many 
more. His twenty-eighth fresh grasshopper 
' proved one to many for him. Such are the 
’ fruits of gormandizing! 
I Monday, 24th.— The mount of the Holy 
Cross has been thoroughly done at last, but 
at a cost of time and labor which was not at 
all anticipated. It may be only after years, 
if at all, that another party will try to repeat 
the ascent; still, some brief recital of our 
experiences may not be without its value. 
There is a broad valley, carrying 5 very 
heavy creek, which runs directly down from 
the main peak, a little east of north, to near¬ 
ly the site of the camp at which my letter 
was begun. This valley was formerly the 
bed of a glacier, and its bottoms and its sides, 
up to a thousand feet or more above the bot¬ 
tom, are rounded and scored by the action 
of the ice. Perhaps there is not in our whole 
country such an exhibition of what the 
French call roeltes moutonnies, or £ ‘sheep- 
backed rocks” ; that look in the distance, 
namely, like a flock of enormous sheep lying 
down in a pasture. As an example of this 
particular kind of glacial action, our trip, 
certainly, has furnished nothing to compare 
with it, even distantly. Take such a valley,, 
with the sheep-backs rising anywhere from 
ten to fifty feet over it, or broken ridges that 
afford no continuous pathway, and with the 
interstices filled with fallen timber, and you 
will readily perceive that traveling in it is 
no pastime; yet all attempts to ascend the 
mountain must stand in some relation to this 
valley—and that, although the ridge on 
neither side reaches the peak without a deep 
hollow intervening. 
Well, our attempt was made up the western 
ridge. It was not hard to ascend from the 
creek valley to the edge of the ridge, but 
there the fallen timber grew worse and 
worse, and twice the train was turned back, 
on both arms of the ridge, and had to camp 
at evening at hardly two hours’ distance 
from the starting point. A lighter party, 
next day, well armed with axes, cut their 
way through, and reached first a high point 
at the edge of the ridge, 1,350 feet above the 
valley, and commanding a splendid view 
both of it, with its glacial phenomena, and 
of the peak beyond; how splendid, Mr, 
Jackson’s photographs, taken from the spot, 
will by ahd by show. Two courses were 
now open ; one, to plunge into the valley 
and work up it as far as possible below; the 
other, to labor along the eclge to a point 
nearly opposite the peak; and try to get 
down there. It was, perhaps, one of those 
eases where, whichever alternative one takes, 
he will be sorry not to have taken the other; 
at any rate, we took, after careful cousidera- 
tion, the first, and would advise any other 
party by all means to try the second, which 
is probably practicable. For the plunge 
sas a long and severe one, and, with our ut¬ 
most efforts, we could get but a mile up 
through the valley, leaving two hours and a j 
half of hard scrambling between our final 
camp and the bottom of the peak, with the 
heavy geodetic and photographic apparatus 
to carry. Nor was the food for the animals 
sufficiently abundant s^id nutricious below. 
Next day, setting out spou after daybreak, 
the ascent was attempted by two parties ; 
the photographic climbing to the end of the 
southern ridge, as being 500 feet lower and 
otherwise more easily accessible, and as ir 
eluding the peak itself in the panorama 
Unfortunately, the weather was not prop 
tious. A showery afternoon the day befot 
had ended in a steady rainy night; and | 
though the clouds broke in the morning, yet 
the flying mist hung about the high sum¬ 
mits all day long, obscuring the view. Both 
parties were compelled, instead of returning 
to camp, to do the best they could at timber- 
line, with no wraps, and only the lunch they 
had taken in their pockets, and to finish , 
their work on the following aborning. For- | 
tunately the night was neither windy nor j 
Cold ; but thirty hours on no provisions but I 
a pocket lunch, are pretty hard upon men, | 
some of whom have done 5,000 feet of climb- ; 
ing with thirty or forty pounds of instru- \ 
ments on their backs. 
The following day was a flue one here, 
although the horizon was much obscured by 
flying storms, and Mr. Gardner was able to 
right his points, and Mr. Jackson to make 
his panoramic views, in time to return to 
camp in fair season. One of the photo¬ 
graphs in particular shows finely the cross 
that gives name to the peak, although the 
lateness of the season has abbreviated some¬ 
what the dimensions of the horizontal arms | 
of the cross. Its cause lies in the cross seams j 
of the gneiss, which cut one another on that I 
face at nearly a right angle, one of the hori¬ 
zontal ones happening to be broken out to 
such a depth as allows the snow to lie long 
in it. 
The mountain itself, like the whole of the 
range to which it belongs, is of primitive rock, 
gneiss: the sedimentary beds cap some of 
: its flanking hills, and abound oyer toward 
the Elk mountains, as well as in the valley 
which lies this side of the Blue river range, 
but they do not appear anywhere near the 
summit. It is not precisely in the main 
range, but rather constitutes a side branch or 
