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Show 460 WESTERN WILDS. Then back would come the breeze and with it the mist, and we would struggle on invisible to each other. About two- thirds of the way up, the elements presented a wonderful sight. The wind coming around the peaks in two currents created a vast whirlpool in mid- air, the clouds formed in an immense oval, with an opening in the center, down which we could see the deep blue sky, millions of miles away. The sunlight brightened the inner edges of this oval, about which the clouds were rushing round and round with a swiftness that made the head swim to witness it. From this center outward the clouds grew darker by easy gradations till lost in two im-mense black columns, one coming around Torrey's Peak from one direc-tion, the other meeting it from Gray's. Just at this time we of the rear- guard were passing along the last " hog- back," which is, perhaps, a rod wide and nearly level ; to the right the face of the mountain, now covered with snow and ice, slopes away at an angle of 50 for some two. thousand feet, while to the left is an open chasm with per-pendicular sides and a depth of seven hundred feet. Fortunately, the trail there is over gravel and loose stones, instead of solid rock, and there is no danger of slipping. But a few weeks since, a lady who went up for a sunrise view, on returning by this point, fainted at sight of what she had passed in the dark. The danger is all in the looks. A horse with any experience can go along a ridge two feet wide just as safely as on a broad turnpike. In 1874, a miner got benighted on McClellan Mountain, and rode a mountain pony down one of those almost perpendicular gorges, where no man dare ride in the day-time and with a sight of the danger. The horse took the nearest cut for home, and only added another instance to the truth that the in-stinct of a mountain pony is more certain than the reason of a man. Had the rider tried to guide him down by day, it would have been death to both. Soon after this passage a loud shout from the upper air announced that the party had completed the ascent ; and hurrying on as fast as our lungs would allow, in half an hour we were with them. Just then a strong wind swept away the clouds, and for ten minutes we enjoyed all the glory of the view a free outlook for a hundred miles or more in all directions. East of us McClellan Mountain seemed to run down with perfect regularity till it merged in Leavenworth, and that again in Griffith ; but that low the clouds were massed so heavily that all view of the plains and foot- hills was shut off. A heavy storm seemed to be in progress at Denver, and the dark clouds hung above that place, but still eight thousand feet below us. Southward we could |
