And what views indeed were those that burst upon them as they crossed from Franklin to Monroe, and that sea of which the stiffened waves were mountains stretched out for an hundred miles in every direction! Some there were, in that line, who had stood on the prouder and more storied peaks of Europe, and yet remembered nothing to diminish the glory of that hour. How the deep gorges slept full of warm sunlight, and how the dark shadows flitted over them, and flickered, and thinned, and faded, as one by one the light clouds were driven southward by the wind! With what a shudder, passing over the narrow ridge or back-bone connecting Monroe and Franklin, they looked down into "Oakes' Gulf" on the right and the "Gulf of Mexico" on the left, only separated by a yard of bushy rock from a descent of three thousand feet on one side, and by less than three yards of slippery stone from more than two thousand feet on the other! The path is a sort of narrow trough, rough enough, but quite as safe, and to those who keep it there is not the least possible danger. Indeed the rider, half hidden in the trough, scarcely knows the fearful narrowness of the bridge over which he is passing; and thousands cross this pass and recross it, and bring away no idea of the sensation that may be gained by a little imprudent hanging over the verge on either side! None of the riders in that cavalcade went back to their beds at the Crawford without a much more intimate knowledge of the capabilities of that situation; but of this in due time. It is impossible for any one who has never made a similar ascent, or who has only ascended with a much smaller number, to conceive the appearance made by that score of equestrians at various points when crossing the open but uneven peaks in the last approach to Washington. Varied in stature, sex and costume, and all sufficiently outre to astonish if not to horrify,--what views the leading riders of the line could catch at times, looking back at the motley line! Some half buried in the trough of the path or midway in a gulch, so that only the head would be visible; others perched on the very top of a huge boulder, ascending or descending; some clinging close to mane or neck as the horse scrambled up an ascent of forty degrees; others lying well back on the saddle when descending a declivity of the same suddenness. What dreams of the Alps and the Apennines there are in such ascents--dreams of the toilers over St. Gothard and the muleteers of the Pyrenees--dreams of memory pleasant to those who have such past experiences to look back upon, and substitutes no less pleasant to many who long for glances at other lands but must die with only that far-off glimpse of the fulness of travel which Moses caught from the hills of the Moabites over that inheritance of his race upon which he was never to enter.