I Have Not Seen Anything Hitherto So Thoroughly
Wild And Unlike The Rest Of These Parts.
I Rode Up One
Great ascent where hills were tumbled about
confusedly; and suddenly across the broad ravine, rising above
the sunny grass and
The deep green pines, rose in glowing and
shaded red against the glittering blue heaven a magnificent and
unearthly range of mountains, as shapely as could be seen, rising
into colossal points, cleft by deep blue ravines, broken up into
sharks' teeth, with gigantic knobs and pinnacles rising from
their inaccessible sides, very fair to look upon - a glowing,
heavenly, unforgettable sight, and only four miles off.
Mountains they looked not of this earth, but such as one sees in
dreams alone, the blessed ranges of "the land which is very far
off." They were more brilliant than those incredible colors in
which painters array the fiery hills of Moab and the Desert, and
one could not believe them for ever uninhabited, for on them
rose, as in the East, the similitude of stately fortresses, not
the gray castellated towers of feudal Europe, but gay, massive,
Saracenic architecture, the outgrowth of the solid rock. They
were vast ranges, apparently of enormous height, their color
indescribable, deepest and reddest near the pine-draped bases,
then gradually softening into wonderful tenderness, till the
highest summits rose all flushed, and with an illusion of
transparency, so that one might believe that they were taking on
the hue of sunset. Below them lay broken ravines of fantastic
rocks, cleft and canyoned by the river, with a tender unearthly
light over all, the apparent warmth of a glowing clime, while I
on the north side was in the shadow among the pure unsullied
snow.
With us the damp, the chill, the gloom;
With them the sunset's rosy bloom.
The dimness of earth with me, the light of heaven with them.
Here, again, worship seemed the only attitude for a human spirit,
and the question was ever present, "Lord, what is man, that Thou
art mindful of him; or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?"
I rode up and down hills laboriously in snow-drifts, getting off
often to ease my faithful Birdie by walking down ice-clad slopes,
stopping constantly to feast my eyes upon that changeless glory,
always seeing some new ravine, with its depths of color or
miraculous brilliancy of red, or phantasy of form. Then below,
where the trail was locked into a deep canyon where there was
scarcely room for it and the river, there was a beauty of an-
other kind in solemn gloom. There the stream curved and twisted
marvellously, widening into shallows, narrowing into deep boiling
eddies, with pyramidal firs and the beautiful silver spruce
fringing its banks, and often falling across it in artistic
grace, the gloom chill and deep, with only now and then a light
trickling through the pines upon the cold snow, when suddenly
turning round I saw behind, as if in the glory of an eternal
sunset, those flaming and fantastic peaks.
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