Dawn aroused us, and animated the extensive landscape around us, whose glens were covered by a thick damp fog, while a fresh breeze blew round the heights. We soon finished breakfast, and when the sun shone on the first peaks of the western mountains we were again ascending the mountain in the direction of our object. After filling our gourd-bottles afresh, we went the whole day indefatigably up the steeps, through desolate rock strata, almost entirely denuded of vegetation, between which, with the exception of a few clumps of fir, only grasses, reeds, and torch-weeds sprang up. We very frequently came to water, which indubitably had its source in the snow melting on the peaks. Toward evening we reached a plateau, which seemed to separate the higher regions from the lower, and extended up and down the mountains, with but slight breaks, as far as we could see. It was at least three miles in breadth, and offered us a free prospect of the mountain saddle and its isolated peaks, of which the Bighorn rose far above the others. All these peaks were covered with a bluish coat of ice, and shone and glistened so in the sun, that it hurt the eyes to look at them for any length of time, while the hollows displayed the pure white of the snow. A number of snowy peaks stood in a large circle around us, among which two enormous domes rose to the sky, the northernmost being the highest, and bearing the name of the Bighorn. On its northern side it is a perfect precipice, while on the south it forms several steep terraces, while the lower peak bears to some degree a resemblance to a truncated cone. We soon recognised the impossibility of reaching these icy heights, still it appeared to us feasible to scale the back of the mountain farther to the north, as we noticed there in a deep gap which ran almost to the summit isolated spots free from snow. The sun was now approaching the distant mountains in the west, the sky gradually turned red and at last stretched out over them like a stream of fire, from which their ice-clad peaks stood out like gleaming flames, the whole boundless landscape around us was suffused with a warm red light, and the peaks in the east had changed their brilliant white into a dark transparent carmine. We stood in silent admiration and saw the last beams of the glowing sun disappear behind the mountains; ere long the gloom of nightfall spread over the earth. The eastern sky was covered with the nocturnal dark purple blue, and the still illumined snow peaks alone looked down on us, like the last gleam of departing day. An icy cold wind reminded us that it was time to look for a resting-place, and without long consideration we went toward the mountains and reached a group of scattered rocks, between which we found a species of moss and dry hard grass, which offered us a softer couch than the bare stones.