I awoke to find my legs asleep from the weight of a fellow-sleeper’s legs crossed over them. As I sat up, leaning my elbows on the bodies of two mountaineers packed tight against me, I saw the old hunter, on his hands and knees in the snow, bending over a bed of coals surrounded by snow-covered fire-logs. Some live coals, awakened by the hunter’s breath, were glowing strong enough for me to thus descry his dark form, and the clear features and puffed cheeks of his face. He had a struggle before the flames sprung up and began drying the wet timbers. It was still dark around us, but a pale, rosy light was beginning to suffuse the sky, from which the storm-clouds had been driven. While part of the company prepared breakfast, the rest of us picked our way through the shoe-mouth-deep snow to the summit of Cold Spring mountain. It was the prospect of a sunrise on mountains of snow that called us forth. The sky was radiant with light when we reached the desired point; but the sun was still hidden behind the symmetrical summit of Cold mountain, the terminal peak of the snowy and shadowed range looming across the dark, narrow valley of the upper Pigeon. Light was pouring, through an eastern gap, upon the wide vale of the river far to the north. In its bottom lay a silver fog. Snow-mantled mountains embosomed it. It resembled the interior of a great porcelain bowl, with a rim of gold appearing round it as day-light grew stronger. Fifty miles away, with front translucent and steel-blue, stood the Black mountains. Apparently no snow had fallen on them. Their elevated, rambling crest, like the edge of a broken-toothed, cross-cut saw, was visible.