first scarce discernible,
gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the
glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me
one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.
At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a
rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed and waiting like devout
worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to fade, two crimson clouds
came streaming across the summit like wings of flame, rendering the
sublime scene yet more impressive; then came darkness and the stars.

Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that
night. I found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about
11,000 feet above the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it,
from which I got water for my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by
furnished abundance of resiny fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and
shattered, circled half-way around the horizon, wearing a savage aspect
in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on its
way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall and the lake and the
glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines anchored in
the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the
most desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the mountains
are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make
themselves felt when one is alone.

I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were
pressed and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the
sides. These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford--snug as
squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty of
wind-played needles to sing one asleep. I little expected company, but,
creeping in through a low side-door, I found five or six birds nestling
among the tassels. The night-wind began to blow soon after dark; at
first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight to a rough
gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges like a cascade,
bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall sang in
chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and seeming
to increase in power as the night advanced--fit voice for such a
landscape. I had to creep out many times to the fire during the night,
for it was biting cold