The higher we rose in the mountains the more serious became our conversation. We were silent only when we lost our breath. Upon occasion, in this grand and lonely scene, the poet would lift his voice so high that it could have been heard on the mountain on the other side of the valley. His enthusiasm naturally lifted his resonant voice. His political hero is John Randolph or Andrew Jackson, his literary hero is Ruskin, his artist in marble is Saint-Gaudens, his pet hobby is Egyptian hieroglyphics, his passion is the road, and his ideal is St. Francis. Tell it to the mountains and the streams; tell it out! They hear and so do I. * * * * * WHERE we stand is where never man has stood before, or foot of man has trod, and the fresh and virginal flowers on every hand look up at us with mute surprise. We carry our argument higher and higher. We sit and boil our pot beside a bank of purple heather, exalted upon the bare scarp of a sun-drowned mountain, and crackling of roots in the fire blends with strident Middle-West American. We pull up to the black door of a great rock, and the splashing of a cascade splashes through his vibrant tones. At last, however, the mountains silenced us. They outstayed us, and will outstay us. They ate up our provisions, and swallowed our breath, and beguiled us deceptively to climb higher. “Upward and onward!” was invisibly written on every crag. And we always expected to get to the top in an hour. We finished the coffee, we finished the milk, we finished the bread, we finished the sugar. We got down to a rasher of bacon a day and tea without sugar and milk. Then even the much-loathed bacon got finished, and the problem was to find a “camp” and get more supplies. So we set ourselves seriously to the task of finding a pass over the range. The poet became much exhausted, and the high altitude evidently affected him more than it did me. We walked quarter-hours and rested quarter-hours, and every time we rested we fell fast asleep. I led up the steep inclines, and we stopped every twenty paces and listened to our breath, I to his breath, he to mine--_ao, ao, ao_--almost a sob, and waited for the _ahoo_ sound, which meant that the lungs had filled again. After some arduous hours in this wise, we came on our first destitute afternoon, to our first topmost ridge. A cold hurricane seemed to try to stop our final conquest of it, and it went through our bodies like swords. But when we exultantly bore through it we came to a sheer precipice going down to a narrow corridor which led always to the northward. * * * * *