All These Streams Become Bigger As You
Draw Nearer To Their Source, And Shortly The Trail Disappeared
In A Broad Rapid River, Which We Forded Twice.
The trail was
very difficult to recover.
It ascended ever in frost and snow,
amidst scanty timber dwarfed by cold and twisted by storms,
amidst solitudes such as one reads of in the High Alps; there
were no sounds to be heard but the crackle of ice and snow, the
pitiful howling of wolves, and the hoot of owls. The sun to me
had long set; the peaks which had blushed were pale and sad; the
twilight deepened into green; but still "Excelsior!" There were
no happy homes with light of household fires; above, the spectral
mountains lifted their cold summits. As darkness came on I began
to fear that I had confused the cabin to which I had been
directed with the rocks. To confess the truth, I was cold, for
my boots and stockings had frozen on my feet, and I was hungry
too, having eaten nothing but raisins for fourteen hours. After
riding thirty miles I saw a light a little way from the track,
and found it to be the cabin of the daughter of the pleasant
people with whom I had spent the previous night. Her husband had
gone to the Plains, yet she, with two infant children, was living
there in perfect security. Two pedlars, who were peddling their
way down from the mines, came in for a night's shelter soon after
I arrived - ill-looking fellows enough.
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