re on his back. Many a
heart has been broken for the few finds which have been made along
those hill sides. All the ledges are covered with charred stumps, a
picture of desolation, where nature had made everything grand and fair.
But even from all this I turned. The last miner I saw gave me explicit
directions, and I left the track and struck upwards into the icy
solitudes--sheets of ice at first, then snow, over a foot deep, pure
and powdery, then a very difficult ascent through a pine forest, where
it was nearly dark, the horse tumbling about in deep snowdrifts. But
the goal was reached, and none too soon.

At a height of nearly 12,000 feet I halted on a steep declivity, and
below me, completely girdled by dense forests of pines, with mountains
red and glorified in the sunset rising above them, was Green Lake,
looking like water, but in reality a sheet of ice two feet thick. From
the gloom and chill below I had come up into the pure air and sunset
light, and the glory of the unprofaned works of God. It brought to my
mind the verse, "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth";
and, as if in commentary upon it, were the hundreds and thousands of
men delving in dark holes in the gloom of the twilight below.

O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices,
O delved gold, the wailer's heap,
God strikes a silence through you all,
He giveth His beloved sleep.

It was something to reach that height and see the far off glory of the
sunset, and by it to be reminded that neither God nor His sun had yet
deserted the world. But the sun was fast going down, and even as I
gazed upon the wonderful vision the glory vanished, and the peaks
became sad and grey. It was strange to be the only human being at that
glacial altitude, and to descend again through a foot of untrodden snow
and over sloping sheets of ice into the darkness, and to see the hill
sides like a firmament of stars, each showing the place where a
solitary man in his hole was delving for silver. The view, as long as
I could see it, was quite awful. It looked as if one could not reach
Georgetown without tumbling down a precipice. Precipices there were in
plenty along the road, skirted with ice to their verge. It was the
only ride which required nerve that I have taken in Colorado, and it
was long after dark when I returned from my exploit.

I left Georgetown at eight the next morning on the Idaho stage, in
glor