, barren grey, on, on for
ever, till the most distant range upbore unsullied snow alone. There
were fair lakes mirroring the dark pine woods, canyons dark and
blue-black with unbroken expanses of pines, snow-slashed pinnacles,
wintry heights frowning upon lovely parks, watered and wooded, lying in
the lap of summer; North Park floating off into the blue distance,
Middle Park closed till another season, the sunny slopes of Estes Park,
and winding down among the mountains the snowy ridge of the Divide,
whose bright waters seek both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There,
far below, links of diamonds showed where the Grand River takes its
rise to seek the mysterious Colorado, with its still unsolved enigma,
and lose itself in the waters of the Pacific; and nearer the snow-born
Thompson bursts forth from the ice to begin its journey to the Gulf of
Mexico. Nature, rioting in her grandest mood, exclaimed with voices of
grandeur, solitude, sublimity, beauty, and infinity, "Lord, what is
man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou
visitest him?" Never-to-be-forgotten glories they were, burnt in upon
my memory by six succeeding hours of terror.

You know I have no head and no ankles, and never ought to dream of
mountaineering; and had I known that the ascent was a real
mountaineering feat I should not have felt the slightest ambition to
perform it. As it is, I am only humiliated by my success, for "Jim"
dragged me up, like a bale of goods, by sheer force of muscle. At the
"Notch" the real business of the ascent began. Two thousand feet of
solid rock towered above us, four thousand feet of broken rock shelved
precipitously below; smooth granite ribs, with barely foothold, stood
out here and there; melted snow refrozen several times, presented a
more serious obstacle; many of the rocks were loose, and tumbled down
when touched. To me it was a time of extreme terror. I was roped to
"Jim," but it was of no use; my feet were paralyzed and slipped on the
bare rock, and he said it was useless to try to go that way, and we
retraced our steps. I wanted to return to the "Notch," knowing that my
incompetence would detain the party, and one of the young men said
almost plainly that a woman was a dangerous encumbrance, but the
trapper replied shortly that if it were not to take a lady up he would
not go up at all. He went on to explore, and reported that further
progress on the correct line of ascent was blocke