The Gloom Of The Dense,
Ancient, Silent Forest Is To Me Awe Inspiring.
On such an
evening it is soundless, except for the branches creaking in the
soft wind, the frequent snap
Of decayed timber, and a murmur in
the pine tops as of a not distant waterfall, all tending to
produce EERINESS and a sadness "hardly akin to pain." There no
lumberer's axe has ever rung. The trees die when they have
attained their prime, and stand there, dead and bare, till the
fierce mountain winds lay them prostrate. The pines grew smaller
and more sparse as we ascended, and the last stragglers wore a
tortured, warring look. The timber line was passed, but yet a
little higher a slope of mountain meadow dipped to the south-west
towards a bright stream trickling under ice and icicles, and
there a grove of the beautiful silver spruce marked our camping
ground. The trees were in miniature, but so exquisitely arranged
that one might well ask what artist's hand had planted them,
scattering them here, clumping them there, and training their
slim spires towards heaven. Hereafter, when I call up memories
of the glorious, the view from this camping ground will come up.
Looking east, gorges opened to the distant Plains, then fading
into purple grey. Mountains with pine-clothed skirts rose in
ranges, or, solitary, uplifted their grey summits, while close
behind, but nearly 3,000 feet above us, towered the bald white
crest of Long's Peak, its huge precipices red with the light of a
sun long lost to our eyes. Close to us, in the caverned side of
the Peak, was snow that, owing to its position, is eternal. Soon
the afterglow came on, and before it faded a big half-moon hung
out of the heavens, shining through the silver blue foliage of
the pines on the frigid background of snow, and turning the
whole into fairyland. The "photo" which accompanies this letter
is by a courageous Denver artist who attempted the ascent just
before I arrived, but, after camping out at the timber line for a
week, was foiled by the perpetual storms, and was driven down
again, leaving some very valuable apparatus about 3,000 feet
from the summit.
Unsaddling and picketing the horses securely, making the beds of
pine shoots, and dragging up logs for fuel, warmed us all. "Jim"
built up a great fire, and before long we were all sitting around
it at supper. It didn't matter much that we had to drink our tea
out of the battered meat tins in which it was boiled, and eat
strips of beef reeking with pine smoke without plates or forks.
"Treat Jim as a gentleman and you'll find him one," I had been
told; and though his manner was certainly bolder and freer than
that of gentlemen generally, no imaginary fault could be found.
He was very agreeable as a man of culture as well as a child of
nature; the desperado was altogether out of sight.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 51 of 144
Words from 26001 to 26504
of 74789
