Gulches Looked Fathomless Abysses, With
Clouds Boiling Up Out Of Them, And Shaggy Mountain Summits, Half
Seen For A Moment Through The Eddies, As Quickly Vanished.
Everything looked vast and indefinite.
Then a huge creation,
like one of Dore's phantom illustrations, with much breathing of
wings, came sailing towards me in a temporary opening in the
mist. As with a strange rustle it passed close over my head, I
saw, for the first time, the great mountain eagle, carrying a
good-sized beast in his talons. It was a noble vision. Then
there were ten miles of metamorphosed gulches - silent,
awful - many ice bridges, then a frozen drizzle, and then the
winds changed from east to north-east. Birdie was covered with
exquisite crystals, and her long mane and the long beard which
covers her throat were pure white. I saw that I must give up
crossing the mountains to this place by an unknown trail; and I
struck the old trail to the St. Vrain, which I had never traveled
before, but which I knew to be more legible than the new one.
The fog grew darker and thicker, the day colder and windier, the
drifts deeper; but Birdie, whose four cunning feet had carried me
600 miles, and who in all difficulties proves her value, never
flinched or made a false step, or gave me reason to be sorry that
I had come on.
I got down to the St. Vrain Canyon in good time, and stopped at a
house thirteen miles from Longmount to get oats.
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