us awake, and we crawled
back and chocked ourselves up with bits of granite inserted under my
ribs and shoulders. In this pleasant position we got dozing again, and
there stole over me a most comfortable ease. The granite softened
perceptibly. I was delightfully warm and sank into an industrious
slumber which lasted with great soundness until four, when we arose and
ate our breakfast of frozen venison.

The thermometer stood at two above zero; everything was frozen tight
except the canteen, which we had prudently kept between us all night.
Stars still blazed brightly, and the moon, hidden from us by western
cliffs, shone in pale reflection upon the rocky heights to the east,
which rose, dimly white, up from the impenetrable shadows of the canon.
Silence,--cold, ghastly dimness, in which loomed huge forms,--the biting
frostiness of the air, wrought upon our feelings as we shouldered our
packs and started with slow pace to climb up the "divide."

Soon, to our dismay, we found the straps had so chafed our shoulders
that the weight gave us great pain, and obliged us to pad them with our
handkerchiefs and extra socks, which remedy did not wholly relieve us
from the constant wearing pain of the heavy load.

Directing our steps southward toward a niche in the wall which bounded
us only half a mile distant, we travelled over a continuous snow-field
frozen so densely as scarcely to yield at all to our tread, at the same
time compressing enough to make that crisp frosty sound which we all
used to enjoy even before we knew from the books that it had something
to do with the severe name of regelation.

As we advanced, the snow sloped more and more steeply up toward the
crags, till by and by it became quite dangerous, causing us to cut steps
with Cotter's large bowie-knife,--a slow, tedious operation, requiring
patience of a pretty permanent kind. In this way we spent a quiet social
hour or so. The sun had not yet reached us, being shut out by the high
amphitheatre wall; but its cheerful light reflected downward from a
number of higher crags, filling the recess with the brightness of day,
and putting out of existence those shadows which so sombrely darkened
the earlier hours. To look back when we stopped to rest was to realize
our danger,--that smooth, swift slope of ice carrying the eye down a
thousand feet to the margin of a frozen mirror of ice; ribs and needles
of rocks piercing up through the snow, so closely grouped that,