We broke camp August 10th at four, after a night of severe cold--27 deg. Fahrenheit--but perfectly dry and dewless. E. and I, as usual, pushed on ahead across Lodge Pole Creek, and so down the valley of Clarke's Fork. An increasing luxury of growth gave us, in wood or swamp, cottonwood, alder, willow, wild currants and myriads of snow-white lilies, and, in pretty contrast, the red or pink paint-brush. Losing Pilot and Index as the windings of the main valley hid them, and leaving them behind us, we began to see rocks of bright colors and more and more regular walls of silvery gray stone. At last the widening valley broadened, and from it diverged five valleys, like the fingers from a hand, each the bed of a stream. As we turned to the left and crossed the wildly-rolling hills, and forded Clarke's Fork to camp by Dead Indian Creek, the novelty and splendor of this almost unequalled view grew and grew. As I close my eyes it comes before me as at the call of an enchanter. From the main valley the outlook is down five grass-clad valleys dotted with trees and here and there flashing with the bright reflection from some hurrying stream. The mountains between rise from two to ten thousand feet, and are singular for the contrasts they present. The most distant to the right were black serrated battlements, looking as if their darkness were vacant spaces in the blue sky beyond. The next hill was a mass of gray limestone, and again, on the left, rose a tall peak of ochreous yellows, sombre reds and grays. The hill above our camp was composed of red and yellow rocks, fading below to gray debris, bounded beneath by a band of grasses, and below this another stratum of tinted rock; and so down to the plain. The side-view of this group showed it to be wildly distorted, the strata lying at every angle, coming out against the distant lava-peaks and the green slopes below them in a glory of tenderly-graded colors.