then we began to
climb again, and to wheeze, fret and fume; and it seemed as if we
actually went down on hands and knees and crept a bit when the grade
became steeper than usual. Only think of it a moment--an incline of two
hundred and twenty feet to the mile in some places, and the track
climbing over itself at frequent intervals. Far below us we saw the
terraces we had passed long before; far above us lay the great land we
were so slowly and so painfully approaching. At last we reached the
summit, ten thousand eight hundred and twenty feet above sea level--a
God-forsaken district, bristling with dead trees, and with hardly air
enough to go around.

We stopped in a long shed--built to keep off the sky, I suppose.
Gallants prospected for flowers and grass-blades, and received the
profuse thanks of the fair in exchange for them. Then we glided down
into the snow lands that lay beyond--filled with a delicious sense of
relief, for a fellow never feels so mean or so small a pigmy as when
perched on an Alpine height.

More canons followed, and no two alike; then came plain after plain,
with buttes outlined in the distance; more plains, with nothing but
their own excessive plainness to boast of. We soon grew vastly weary;
for most plains are, after all, mere platitudes. And then Salt Lake
City, the Mormon capital, with its lake shimmering like a mirage in the
great glow of the valley; and a run due north through the well-tilled
lands of the thrifty "saints," getting our best wayside meals at
stations where buxom Mormon women served us heartily; still north and
west, flying night and day out of the insufferable summer dust that
makes ovens of those midland valleys. There was a rich, bracing air far
north, and grand forests of spicy pine, and such a Columbia river-shore
to follow as is worth a week's travel merely to get one glimpse of; and
at last Portland, the prettiest of Pacific cities, and heaps of friends
to greet me there.

Bright days were to follow, as you shall soon see; for I was still bound
northward, with no will to rest until I had plowed the floating fields
of ice and dozed through the pale hours of an arctic summer under the
midnight sun.

CHAPTER V.

Off for Alaska.

If you are bound for Alaska, you can make the round trip most
conveniently and comfortably by taking the steamer at Portland, Oregon,
and retaining your state-room until you land again in Portland, three
weeks later. Or you can run