Long's Peak, the "American Matterhorn," 14,700 feet high, has seldom been ascended, and Miss Bird is the first woman who has had the courage and resolution to reach its summit. Her party consisted of herself, two youths, the sons of a certain Dr. H., and "Mountain Jim," one of the famous scouts of the plain, an expert in Indian border warfare, who acted as guide. The ride at first was one long series of glories and surprises, of peak and glade, of lake and stream, and of mountain upon mountain, culminating in the shivered pinnacles of Long's Peak. And as the sun slowly sank, the pines stood out darkling against the golden sky, the grey peaks took upon their crests a glory of crimson and purple, a luminous mist of changing colours filled every glen, gorge, and canyon, while the echoes softly repeated that peculiar sough or murmur which accompanies the departing day. Our adventurer, with heart touched by the magical beauty and magnificence of the scene, crossed a steep wooded incline into a deep hollow, where, embosomed in the mountain-solitude, slept a lily-covered lake, cradling white, pure blossoms and broad green leaves, and aptly named "The Lake of the Lilies." Calm on its amethyst-coloured waters lay the tremulous shadow of the great dark pine woods. Thence she and her companions passed again into the leafy wilderness which clothes the mountain side up to a height of about 11,000 feet, cheered, as they climbed slowly upwards on their laborious path, by delightful vistas of "golden atmospheres and rose-lit summits," such as broke upon the dreams of him who created in his fancy the Garden of Armida; upward and onward through the dusky shade, which in itself may well impress a quick imagination. It is the _silence_ of the forest that makes its mystery. The only sounds are those of the branches swaying in the breeze, or of a bough crashing to the ground through decay, or the occasional voices of the wandering birds; and these seem but to increase the silence by their inadequateness of contrast. Alone in this profundity of gloom it is difficult for the traveller to resist the sense and feeling of a supernatural Presence, and he comes to understand in what way such eerie legends and grim traditions have grown up about the forest, and why to the early races its still depths seemed haunted by the creatures of another world. Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades Like vaporous shapes half seen;-- and the forest is peopled with the phantoms that are born of Silence and Twilight.