It was very early--in fact, the first rays of the sun, not yet risen, had just touched the lofty heights of Rainier--when Rhodes and I left the Inn. Besides our revolvers and a goodly supply of ammunition, there were the lights, an aneroid, a thermometer, our canteens, ice-picks; two pieces of light but very strong rope, each seventy-five feet in length; our knives, like those which hunters carry; and food sufficient to last us _a week_. Yes, and there were the ice-creepers, which we should need in making our way over the glaciers, the Paradise and the Cowlitz, to that mass of rock, the scene of those mysterious tragedies. We did not take the direct trail up but went over to the edge of the cañon that I--for this was my first visit to Mount Rainier--might see the Nisqually Glacier. And, as we made our way upward through the brightening scene, as I gazed upon the grim cosmic beauty all about me, up into the great cirque of the Nisqually, up to the broad summit of the mountain and (in the opposite direction) out over the Tatoosh Range to distant Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens all violet and gold in the morning sun--well, that strange story which had brought us here then took on the seeming of a mirage or a dream. "The mountain," said Milton Rhodes, as we stood leaning on our alpenstocks during one of our halts, "once rose to a height of sixteen thousand feet or more. The dip of the lava layers shows that. The whole top was blown clean off." "Must have been some real fireworks," was my comment, "when that happened." "See that line of bare rock there on the very summit, Bill, midway between Point Success up here on the left and Gibraltar here on the right?" "I noticed that," I told him, "and was wondering about it. Why isn't there any snow there?" "Heat, Bill," said Rhodes. "Heat." "Heat! Great Vesuvius, I thought that Mount Rainier was a dead volcano." "Not dead, Bill. Only slumbering. Four eruptions are on record.[4] Whether Old He is to die in his slumber, or whether he is one day to awake in mad fury--that, of course, no man can tell us." [Footnote 4: "At this time (November, 1843) two of the great snowy cones, Mount Regnier and St. Helens, were in action. On the 23rd of the preceding November, St. Helens had scattered its ashes, like a white fall of snow, over the Dalles of the Columbia, 50 miles distant. A specimen of these ashes was given to me by Mr. Brewer, one of the clergymen at the Dalles."--Fremont.] "To see it belching forth smoke and sending down streams of lava would be an interesting sight certainly," said I. "And I wonder what effect that would have on this Drome business--that is, if there is any such thing as Drome at all." "Drome!" Milton echoed. For some moments he stood there with a strange look of abstraction upon his face. "Drome! Ah, Bill," said he, "I wish that I knew what it means. But come, we'll never reach the Tamahnowis Rocks if we stand here wondering."