From this time, during our stay in the Grand Basin and until we had left it and descended again, the weather progressively cleared and brightened until all clouds were dispersed. From time to time there were fresh descents of vapor, and even short snow-storms, but there was no general enveloping of the mountain again. Cold it was, at times even in the sunshine, with "a nipping and an eager air," but when the wind ceased it would grow intensely hot. On the 4th June, at 3 P. M., the thermometer in the full sunshine rose to 50 deg. F.--the highest temperature recorded on the whole excursion--and the fatigue of packing in that thin atmosphere with the sun's rays reflected from ice and snow everywhere was most exhausting. We were burned as brown as Indians; lips and noses split and peeled in spite of continual applications of lanoline, but, thanks to those most beneficent amber snow-glasses, no one of the party had the slightest trouble with his eyes. At night it was always cold, 10 deg. below zero being the highest minimum during our stay in the Grand Basin, and 21 deg. below zero the lowest. But we always slept warm; with sheep-skins and caribou-skins under us, and down quilts and camel's-hair blankets and a wolf-robe for bedding, the four of us lay in that six-by-seven tent, in one bed, snug and comfortable. It was disgraceful overcrowding, but it was warm. The fierce little primus stove, pumped up to its limit and perfectly consuming its kerosene fuel, shot out its corona of beautiful blue flame and warmed the tight, tiny tent. The primus stove, burning seven hours on a quart of coal-oil, is a little giant for heat generation. If we had had two, so that one could have served for cooking and one for heating, we should not have suffered from the cold at all, but as it was, whenever the stew-pot went on the stove, or a pot full of ice to melt, the heat was immediately absorbed by the vessel and not distributed through the tent. But another primus stove would have been another five or six pounds to pack, and we were "heavy" all the time as it was. [Illustration: Traverse under the cliffs of the Northeast Ridge to enter the Grand Basin.] [Sidenote: The Labor of Packing]