ung the pack-outfit, plodding doggedly along. From the
rim we could look back down that fire-swept valley toward Heart Lake and
the camp we had left. But there was little time for looking back.
Somewhere ahead was a brawling river descending in great leaps from
Lyman Lake, which lay in a basin above and beyond. Our camp, that night,
was to be on the shore of Lyman Lake, at the foot of Lyman Glacier. And
we had still far to go.

Mr. Hilligoss met us on the trail. He had found a camp-site by the lake
and had seen a bear and a deer. There were wild ducks also.

Now and then there are scenes in the mountains that defy the written
word. The view from Cloudy Pass is one; the outlook from Cascade Pass is
another. But for sheer loveliness there are few things that surpass
Lyman Lake at sunset, its great glacier turned to pink, the towering
granite cliffs which surround it dark purple below, bright rose at the
summits. And lying there, still with the stillness of the ages, the
quiet lake.

There was, as a matter of fact, nothing to disturb its quiet. Not a
fish, so far as we could discover, lived in its opalescent water, cloudy
as is all glacial water. It is only good to look at, is Lyman Lake, and
there are no people to look at it.

Set in its encircling, snow-covered mountains, it lies fifty-five
hundred feet above sea-level. We had come up in two days from eleven
hundred feet, a considerable climb. That night, for the first time, we
saw the northern lights--at first, one band like a cold finger set
across the sky, then others, shooting ribbons of cold fire, now bright,
now dim, covering the northern horizon and throwing into silhouette the
peaks over our heads.

XII

CLOUDY PASS AND THE AGNES CREEK VALLEY

I think I have said that one of the purposes of our expedition was to
hunt. We were to spend a day or two at Lyman Lake, and the sportsmen
were busy by the camp-fire that evening, getting rifles and shotguns in
order and preparing fishing-tackle.

At dawn the next morning, which was at four o'clock, one of the packers
roused the Big Boy with the information that there were wild ducks on
the lake. He was wakened with extreme difficulty, put on his bedroom
slippers, picked up his shotgun, and, still in his sleeping-garments,
walked some ten feet from the mouth of his tent. There he yawned,
discharged both barrels of his gun in the general direction of the
ducks, yawned again, and went back to bed.

I mysel