"The dimness of earth with me, the light of heaven with them. Here, again, worship seemed the only attitude for a human spirit, and the question was ever present, 'Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?' I rode up and down hills laboriously in snow-drifts, getting off often to ease my faithful Birdie by walking down ice-clad slopes, stopping constantly to feast my eyes upon that changeless glory, always seeing some new ravine, with its depths of colour or miraculous brilliancy of red or phantasy of form. Then below, where the trail was locked into a deep canyon, where there was scarcely room for it and the river, there was a beauty of another kind in solemn gloom. There the stream curved and twisted marvellously, widening into shallows, narrowing into deep boiling eddies, with pyramidal firs and the beautiful silver spruce fringing its banks, and often falling across it in artistic grace, the gloom chill and deep, with only now and then a light trickling through the pines upon the cold snow, when, suddenly turning round, I saw behind, as if in the glory of an eternal sunset, those flaming and fantastic peaks. The effect of the combination of winter and summer was singular. The trail rose on the north side the whole time, and the snow lay deep and pure white, while not a wreath of it lay on the south side, where abundant lawns basked in the warm sun."[43] There is something in the majesty of mountain scenery, in the lofty peaks, the shadowy ravines, and the tremendous precipices; in the glow and light and glory which the sun pours out upon the heights, and the strange gloom and haunted darkness which sleep in the mysterious depths, that deeply impresses the imagination and the thoughts of men, and appeals to that higher, purer nature which too often lies dormant in us. However unmoved we may be by the ordinary sights and sounds which fill up the landscapes, we are most of us hushed and breathless among the mountains, mutely acknowledging the manifestations of a Presence and a Power which are not of the earth--earthy. As the rose of dawn blushes on each waving crest in the birth-hour of the day, or the purple splendour invests them in regal robes when the sun goes down, they seem to reveal to us a vision of the other world; those changing lights that fall upon them are surely the passing gleams of wings of angels; those mystic voices that linger among their echoes, what can they be but the divine chords of that glorious harmony which for ever goes up around the "great white throne"? * * * * *