nd
walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean
of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the
conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable
extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of
suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral
trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the
immense sweep of its devastation.

Resolved to search for a trail no longer, when daylight came I
selected for a landmark the lowest notch in the Madison Range.
Carefully surveying the jagged and broken surface over which I must
travel to reach it, left the lake and pushed into the midst of its
intricacies. All the day, until nearly sunset, I struggled over rugged
hills, through windfalls, thickets, and matted forests, with the
rock-ribbed beacon constantly in view. As I advanced it receded, as if
in mockery of my toil. Night overtook me with my journey half
accomplished. The precaution of obtaining fire gave me warmth and
sleep, and long before daylight I was on my way. The hope of finding
an easy pass into the valley of the Madison inspired me with fresh
courage and determination, but long before I arrived at the base of
the range, I scanned hopelessly its insurmountable difficulties. It
presented to my eager vision an endless succession of inaccessible
peaks and precipices, rising thousands of feet sheer and bare above
the plain. No friendly gorge or gully or canon invited such an effort
as I could make to scale this rocky barrier. Oh, for the faith that
could remove mountains! How soon should this colossal fabric open at
my approach! What a feeling of helpless despair came over me with the
conviction that the journey of the last two days had been in vain! I
seated myself on a rock, upon the summit of a commanding hill, and
cast my eyes along the only route which now seemed tenable--down the
Yellowstone. How many dreary miles of forest and mountain filled the
terrible panorama! I thought that before accepting this discouraging
alternative I would spend a day in search for a pass. Twenty miles at
most would take me into the Madison Valley, and thirty more restore me
to friends who had abundance. Supposing that I should find plenty of
thistles, I had left the lake with a small supply, and that was
entirely spent. I looked in vain for them where I then was.

While I was thus considering whether to remain and search for a