This great crescent range is, indeed, our rampart against the hateful humidity of the coast and gives to us in the interior the dry, windless, exhilarating cold that is characteristic of our winters. We owe it mainly to this range that our snowfall averages about six feet instead of the thirty or forty feet that falls on the coast. The winds that sweep northward toward this mountain range are saturated with moisture from the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean; but contact with the lofty colds condenses the moisture into clouds and precipitates most of it on the southern slopes as snow. Still bearing all the moisture their lessened temperature will allow, the clouds pour through every notch and gap in the range and press resolutely onward and downward, streaming along the glaciers toward the interior. But all the time of their passage they are parting with their moisture, for the snow is falling from them continually in their course. They reach the interior, indeed, and spread out triumphant over the lowlands, but most of their burden has been deposited along the way. One is reminded of the government train of mules from Fort Egbert that used to supply the remote posts of the "strategic" telegraph line before strategy yielded to economy and the useless line was abandoned. When the train reached the Tanana Crossing it had eaten up nine-tenths of its original load, and only one-tenth remained for the provisioning of the post. So these clouds were being squeezed like a sponge; every saddle they pushed through squeezed them; every peak and ridge they surmounted squeezed them; every glacier floor they crept down squeezed them, and they reached the interior valleys attenuated, depleted, and relatively harmless. [Sidenote: Aneroids] The aneroids had kept fairly well with the mercurial barometer and the boiling-point thermometer until we moved to the ridge; from this time they displayed a progressive discrepancy therewith that put them out of serious consideration, and one was as bad as the other. Eleven thousand feet seemed the limit of their good behavior. To set them back day by day, like Captain Cuttle's watch, would be to depend wholly upon the other instruments anyway, and this is just what we did, not troubling to adjust them. They were read and recorded merely because that routine had been established. Says Burns: "There was a lad was born in Kyle, But whatna day o' whatna style, I doubt it's hardly worth the while To be sae nice wi' Robin." So they were just aneroids: aluminum cases, jewelled movements, army-officer patented improvements, Kew certificates, import duty, and all--just aneroids, and one was as bad as the other. Within their limitations they are exceedingly useful instruments, but it is folly to depend on them for measuring great heights.