A glorious night, moon in the full, but empty stomachs. We are now far enough away from the lakes to be clear of the clouds of vapor and local snow storms. Our camp is about at a central point with reference to obtaining a view of the Tetons, and at a distance of fifteen miles from the nearest part of the range. (Distance actually about 7 miles, Doane’s estimate inaccurate.) The moonlight view was one of unspeakable grandeur. There are twenty-two summits in the line, all of them mighty mountains, with the gleaming spire of Mount Hayden rising in a pinnacle above all. The whole range is of naked rock in vast glittering masses, mostly coarse granites, but with some carboniferous and metamorphose rocks, the splendid colorings of these sheeted as they were with ice, contrasted finely with the snowy masses in all places where the snow would lie, and with the sombre depths of the great avalanche channels and mighty canyons. Of the latter the grandest is the Teton (Cascade Canyon) which half surrounds Mount Hayden, is four thousand feet deep, where it opens out into the valley in front of us, has a splendid torrent of roaring cascades in its channel and a baby glacier still at its head. The wide valley in front, seamed with rocky channels and heaped with moraines, is a grim, ruinous landscape. There are no foothills to the Tetons. They rise suddenly in rugged majesty from the rock strewn plain. Masses of heavy forests appear on the glacial debris and in parks behind the curves of the lower slopes, but the general field of vision is glittering, glaciated rock. The soft light floods the great expanse of the valley, the winding silvery river and the resplendent, deeply carved mountain walls. The vast masses of Neve on the upper ledges from their lofty resting places shine coldly down, and stray masses of clouds, white and fleecy, cast deep shadows over land and terrace, forest and stream. And later on when the moon had gone down in exaggerated volume behind the glorified spire of the Grand Teton (Doane must have used the names Mount Hayden and Grand Teton interchangeably) the stars succeeded with their myriad sparkling lights, and these blazed up in setting on the sharpcut edges of the great, serrated wall like Indian signal fires in successive spectral flashes, rising and dying out by hundreds as the hours passed on. On the wide continent of North America there is no mountain group to compare in scenic splendor with the Great Tetons. There was not a pound of food in camp. We ate the last beans for supper, before going out to make notes on the Teton view. MAP OF THE REGION [Illustration: CENTRAL ROCKY MOUNTAINS] ..... COLTER’S PROBABLE ROUTE, 1807-08 - - - DOANE’S EXPEDITION