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Show THE CENTENNIAL STATE. 481 fluttering of the heart and beating in the temples which result from an attenuated atmosphere. Here is the original home of the mount-ain sheep. On these grassy knolls they kept fat from August till January, and when Georgetown was first settled they were slaughtered here by hundreds. This mountain bunch- grass and the finer grass on the higher slopes furnished them abundant feed till covered by the deep snows of January and February, as the snows are light here before that time. When the snow melted in April and May, all the sweetness left the grass, and the big- horn " lived on his fat" till June or July again. Black- tailed deer, too, were plenty, and occasionally a grizzly bear made the solitudes lively; now these animals are rarely seen this side of the summit, though sheep horns can be picked up frequently, and adorn the front of many a miner's cabin. We toil slowly up over these knolls for an hour, - at each turn the summit seeming just before us. The grassy region passed, we enter on the more rocky belt near the summit, and how mines are abundant and miners' cabins appear on every hand, sometimes built on a narrow flat, worked on the face of the slope, and again anchored with iron supports upon some projecting rock. At intervals we encounter pack trains coming down with ore, the little Mexican burros ( donkeys) carrying immense raAvhide panniers filled with the minerals, and near the summit encounter a party, consisting of one gentleman and three ladies, cautiously descending from the Highland Park. We see at a glance that they are Eastern people, as the resident ladies generally ride burros, sitting astride a sort of modified pack- saddle, but these have ponies and the Eastern side- saddle. The trail looks terrible, but horsemen sometimes get down this way, by walking in the worst places. It is three hours since we left the valley, and we stand at last on the edge of the tolerably level summit, but across a sort of meadow is the foot of the last rocky ridge, which still towers from five to fifteen hundred feet above us. But this serrated battlement is not contin-uous on these sub- ranges, which are mere spurs of the Rocky Mount-ains; it stands out rather in detached peaks, leaving between them large sections of the summit level, over which a vehicle might be driven without difficulty. Every miner's cabin is the house of n friend, and in the nearest we find some hot coffee to moisten our cold lunch ; then climb to the highest point, and with a good field- glass proceed to take views over a circuit of a hundred miles. Gray's and Torrey's peaks glisten through the clear air, seeming no morn than two or three miles away. To the north and south of them ex- 31 |
