hing, with scarcely any interruption of
continuity, almost from the Arctic Circle to the Straits of Magellan. At
the point ascended by Miss Bird their scenery was of the grandest
description--wonderful ascents, wild fantastic views, cool and bowery
shades, romantic glens echoing melodiously with the fall of waters. But
it is only fair that Miss Bird should be heard on her own account:--

"A tremendous ascent among rocks and pines to a height of 9,000 feet
brought us to a passage seven feet wide through a wall of rock, with an
abrupt descent of 2,000 feet, and a yet higher ascent beyond. I never
saw anything so strange as looking back. It was a single gigantic ridge
which we had passed through, standing up knife-like, built up entirely
of great brick-shaped masses of bright-red rock, piled one on another by
Titans. Pitch-pines grew out of these crevices, but there was not a
vestige of soil. Beyond, wall beyond wall of similar construction, and
range above range, rose into the blue sky. Fifteen miles more over great
ridges, along passes dark with shadow, and so narrow that we had to ride
in the beds of the streams which had excavated them, round the bases of
colossal pyramids of rock crested with pines, up into fair upland
'parks' scarlet in patches with the poison oak, parks so beautifully
arranged by nature that I momentarily expected to come upon some stately
mansion; but that afternoon, crested blue jays and chipmonks had them
all to themselves. Here, in the early morning, deer, bighorn, and the
stately elk come down to feed; and there, in the night, prowl and growl
the Rocky Mountain lion, the grizzly bear, and the cowardly wolf. There
were chasms of immense depth, dark with the indigo gloom of pines, and
mountains with snow gleaming on their splintered crests, loveliness to
bewilder and grandeur to awe, and still streams and shady pools, and
cool depths of shadow; mountains again, dense with pines, among which
patches of aspen gleamed like gold; valleys where the yellow cottonwood
mingled with the crimson oak, and so, on and on through the lengthening
shadows till the track, which in places had been hardly legible, became
well defined, and we entered a long gulch with broad swellings of grass
belted with pines."[41]

Long's Peak, the "American Matterhorn," 14,700 feet high, has seldom
been ascended, and Miss Bird is the first woman who has had the courage
and resolution to reach its summit. Her party consisted of he