d escaped wetting when I broke through the ice, was noticeably
stronger than on the rest of my body. Climbing soon dried my clothes
sufficiently to make this difference no longer noticeable. The waves
became more frequent than at first, but not so strong. I made a clumsy
climb of about five hundred feet, my muscles being "muscle-bound" all
the time with rigidity from electricity. But this climb brought me
almost to timber-line on Specimen Mountain, and also under the shadow
of the south peak of it. At this place the electrical effects almost
ceased. Nor did I again seriously feel the current until I found
myself out in the sunlight which came between the two peaks of
Specimen. While I continued in the sunlight I felt the electrical
wave, but, strange to say, when I again entered the shadow I almost
wholly escaped it.

When I started on the last slope toward the top of North Specimen, I
came out into the sunlight again, and I also passed into an electrical
sea. The slope was free from snow, and as the electrical waves swept
in close succession, about thirty seconds apart, they snapped, hummed,
and buzzed in such a manner that their advance and retreat could be
plainly heard. In passing by me, the noise was more of a crackling and
humming nature, while a million faint sparks flashed from the stones
(porphyry and rhyolite) as the wave passed over. But the effect on me
became constant. Every muscle was almost immovable. I could climb only
a few steps without weakening to the stopping-point. I breathed only
by gasps, and my heart became violent and feeble by turns. I felt as
if cinched in a steel corset. After I had spent ten long minutes and
was only half-way up a slope, the entire length of which I had more
than once climbed in a few minutes and in fine shape, I turned to
retreat, but as there was no cessation of the electrical colic, I
faced about and started up again. I reached the top a few minutes
before 6.30 P. M., and shortly afterward the sun disappeared behind
clouds and peaks.

I regret that I failed to notice whether the electrical effects
ceased with the setting of the sun, but it was not long after the
disappearance of the sun before I was at ease, enjoying the
magnificent mountain-range of clouds that had formed above the
foothills and stood up glorious in the sunlight.

Shortly before five o'clock the clouds had begun to pile up in the
east, and their gigantic forms, flowing outlines, and glorious
lightin