which we had climbed, lay--nothing: a
void, a sheer gulf many thousands of feet deep, and one shrank back
instinctively from the little parapet of the snow basin when one had
glanced at the awful profundity. Across the gulf, about three thousand
feet beneath us and fifteen or twenty miles away, sprang most splendidly
into view the great mass of Denali's Wife, or Mount Foraker, as some
white men misname her, filling majestically all the middle distance. It
was our first glimpse of her during the whole ascent. Denali's Wife does
not appear at all save from the actual summit of Denali, for she is
completely hidden by his South Peak until the moment when his South Peak
is surmounted. And never was nobler sight displayed to man than that
great, isolated mountain spread out completely, with all its spurs and
ridges, its cliffs and its glaciers, lofty and mighty and yet far
beneath us. On that spot one understood why the view of Denali from Lake
Minchumina is the grand view, for the west face drops abruptly down with
nothing but that vast void from the top to nigh the bottom of the
mountain. Beyond stretched, blue and vague to the southwest, the wide
valley of the Kuskokwim, with an end of all mountains. To the north we
looked right over the North Peak to the foot-hills below, patched with
lakes and lingering snow, glittering with streams. We had hoped to see
the junction of the Yukon and Tanana Rivers, one hundred and fifty miles
away to the northwest, as we had often and often seen the summit of
Denali from that point in the winter, but the haze that almost always
qualifies a fine summer day inhibited that stretch of vision. Perhaps
the forest-fires we found raging on the Tanana River were already
beginning to foul the northern sky.

[Illustration: Denali's Wife from the summit of Denali]

It was, however, to the south and the east that the most marvellous
prospect opened before us. What infinite tangle of mountain ranges
filled the whole scene, until gray sky, gray mountain, and gray sea
merged in the ultimate distance! The near-by peaks and ridges stood out
with dazzling distinction, the glaciation, the drainage, the relation of
each part to the others all revealed. The snow-covered tops of the
remoter peaks, dwindling and fading, rose to our view as though floating
in thin air when their bases were hidden by the haze, and the beautiful
crescent curve of the whole Alaskan range exhibited itself from Denali
to the sea. To