tematic order; whereas Gray's, as has been said, is a narrow
ridge, composed chiefly of comparatively small stones, with a sprinkling
of good-sized boulders. The finer rocks give the impression of having
been ground down by crushing and attrition to their present dimensions
in the far-away, prehistoric ages.

A short distance to the northwest frowned Torrey's Peak, Gray's
companion-piece, the twain being connected by a ridge which dips in an
arc perhaps a hundred feet below the summits. The ridge was covered with
a deep drift of snow, looking as frigid and unyielding as a scene in the
arctic regions. Torrey's is only a few feet lower than Gray's--one of my
books says five. Mention has been made of its forbidding aspect. It is
indeed one of the most ferocious-looking mountains in the Rockies, its
crown pointed and grim, helmeted with snow, its sides, especially east
and north, seamed and ridged and jagged, the gorges filled with snow,
the beetling cliffs jutting dark and threatening, bearing huge drifts
upon their shoulders. Torrey's Peak actually seemed to be calling over
to us like some boastful Hercules, "Ah, ha! you have climbed my
mild-tempered brother, but I dare you to climb me!" For reasons of our
own we declined the challenge.

The panorama from Gray's Peak is one to inspire awe and dwell forever in
the memory, an alpine wonderland indeed and in truth. To the north,
northwest, and west there stretches, as far as the eye can reach, a vast
wilderness of snowy peaks and ranges, many of them with a rosy glow in
the sunshine, tier upon tier, terrace above terrace, here in serried
ranks, there in isolated grandeur, some just beyond the dividing
canyons, others fifty, sixty, a hundred miles away, cyclopean, majestic,
infinite. Far to the north, Long's Peak lifts his seamed and hoary
pyramid, almost as high as the crest on which we are standing; in the
west rise that famous triad of peaks, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton,
their fanelike towers, sketched against the sky, disputing the palm with
old Gray himself; while a hundred miles to the south Pike's Peak stands
solitary and smiling in the sun, seeming to say, "I am sufficient unto
myself!" Between our viewpoint and the last-named mountain lies South
Park, like a paradise of green immured by guardian walls of rock and
snow, and far to the east, beyond the billowing ranges, white, gray, and
green, stretch the limitless plains, vanishing in the hazy distance. In
such surr