Close To Us, In The Caverned Side Of
The Peak, Was Snow That, Owing To Its Position, Is Eternal.
Soon
the afterglow came on, and before it faded a big half-moon hung
out of the heavens, shining through the silver blue foliage of
the pines on the frigid background of snow, and turning the
whole into fairyland.
The "photo" which accompanies this letter
is by a courageous Denver artist who attempted the ascent just
before I arrived, but, after camping out at the timber line for a
week, was foiled by the perpetual storms, and was driven down
again, leaving some very valuable apparatus about 3,000 feet
from the summit.
Unsaddling and picketing the horses securely, making the beds of
pine shoots, and dragging up logs for fuel, warmed us all. "Jim"
built up a great fire, and before long we were all sitting around
it at supper. It didn't matter much that we had to drink our tea
out of the battered meat tins in which it was boiled, and eat
strips of beef reeking with pine smoke without plates or forks.
"Treat Jim as a gentleman and you'll find him one," I had been
told; and though his manner was certainly bolder and freer than
that of gentlemen generally, no imaginary fault could be found.
He was very agreeable as a man of culture as well as a child of
nature; the desperado was altogether out of sight. He was very
courteous and even kind to me, which was fortunate, as the young
men had little idea of showing even ordinary civilities.
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