"Our journey of five miles, the next day, was accomplished with great difficulty and annoyance. Almost the entire distance was through a forest piled full of fallen trunks. Travelling was but another name for scrambling; and as man is at times the least amiable of animals, our tempers frequently displayed alarming activity, not only towards the patient creatures laden with our stores, but towards each other. Once, while involved in the reticulated meshes of a vast net of branches and tree-tops, each man, with varied expletive emphasis, clamorously insisting upon a particular mode of extrication, a member of the party, who was always jolly, restored us to instant good-humor by repeating, in theatrical tone and manner, those beautiful lines from Childe Harold:-- "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore." Our 'Little Invulnerable,' too, was the unconscious cause of many bursts of laughter, which, like the plaudits of an appreciative audience, came in at the right time." The eastern rim of the Yellowstone Basin is formed by one of the grandest volcanic ranges in the world, the general level of their summits being about 10,000 feet above the sea, while numerous peaks thrust their rugged crests a thousand feet higher into the sky. Mr. Langford and Lieutenant Doane were the first to penetrate this range, climbing with great labor one of the highest of the groups of lofty peaks near the southeast corner of the Lake. "The grandeur and vast extent of the view from this elevation," writes Mr. Langford, "beggar description. The lake and valley surrounding it lay seemingly at our feet within jumping distance. Beyond them we saw with great distinctness the jets of the mud volcano and geyser. But beyond all these, stretching away into a horizon of cloud-defined mountains, was the entire Wind River range, revealing in the sunlight the dark recesses, gloomy cañons, stupendous precipices, and glancing pinnacles, which everywhere dotted its jagged slopes. Lofty peaks shot up in gigantic spires from the main body of the range, glittering in the sunbeams like solid crystal. The mountain on which we stood was the most westerly peak of a range which, in long-extended volume, swept to the southeastern horizon, exhibiting a continuous elevation more than thirty miles in width; its central line broken into countless points, knobs, glens, and defiles, all on the most colossal scale of grandeur and magnificence. Outside of these, on either border, along the entire range, lofty peaks rose at intervals, seemingly vying with each other in the varied splendors they presented to the beholder. The scene was full of majesty. The valley at the base of this range was dotted with small lakes and cloven centrally by the river, which, in the far distance, we could see emerging from a cañon of immense dimensions, within the shade of which two enormous jets of steam shot to an incredible height into the atmosphere."