Helen Fitzgerald Sanders

“ It is flanked on all sides by the savage, beetling peaks marshalled in endless ranks like the spears and unsheathed lances of war-gods in their domain midway between earth and heaven. Out across the death-white pallor of snow, in the death-chill of the ice-fields, we strike out slowly, cautiously, for the surface of the ice, now hidden by snow, is cleft by crevasses even to the mountain's core, and a misstep, a fall into their depths would be doom. Far away over the white stretches, a gaunt, spectral coyote watches our painful progress. ”

“ The shadow of that crime has never lifted and it broods forever over the lake's dark face and upon the mountains that hold it in their cup of stone. There the echo is multiplied. If one calls aloud, a chorus of fantastic, mocking voices takes up the sound and it goes crying through the solitude like lost souls in Purgatory. The Waters of the Forgiven exhale their eternal sigh, their pensive gloom, even when the sun rides high in the blue, but to feel the fullness of its spectral melancholy, one must seek it out in the secrecy of night. ”

“ The pine-sweet air fills us with the very spirit of the woods as we strike out over the gilded trail through forests transfigured into a welter of gorgeous hues, past deep-cleft ravines purple as the heart of a violet, to dim lilac mountains that melt into the300 blue. What is it that is mystical, spiritual, if you will, in this colour of violet? It is not like the robust, tangible green of the trees, the definite reality of the flowers' multi-coloured petals. We cannot lay our hands upon it any more than we can grasp a sunbeam, for like hope deferred, it lies forever beyond our reach. ”

“ Strange music swelling from untutored lips and awakening hearts into the wild silence which had echoed only the howl of native beasts and the war cry of battle and death! Yet even in that hymn of thanksgiving there was an undertone of unconscious sadness. It was the beginning of a new epoch. The old, poetical wood-myth and paganism were gone; the free range over mountain and plain in the exhilarating chase would slowly give place to the pursuits of husbandry. And this new, shapeless compound of civilization and religion was bringing with its blessings, a burden of obligation and pain. ”

“ Once the winter snows descend, these birds become as white as the frigid regions which they inhabit. Ordinarily they are very wild, but this little mother, knowing only friendliness from human visitors, comes forth trustfully with her beloved young, suffers them to be handled and caressed and she, herself, with wings dropped in the semblance of a pretty courtesy, jumps into the hand of the guide, and from that perch feeds daintily on the pink and white buds of the moss, as fragilely lovely as the snowflakes to which they appear strangely akin. ”

“ The way is very fair, ministering to the senses; troops of new, forest forms and colours pass before the eye, the mingled sweets of the flowers, the pungent251 mould and balsam of spruce and pine breathe sensuously into the nostrils, and the fingers of the wind caress and soothe as they pass. Through the voiceful silence, sounds that are on the borderland between fancy and reality, thrill for a moment, then are lost in the grand chorus of trees and rushing rivers. A stream of volume and velocity flowing through a deep gorge falls twice in its downward rush. ”

“ As the Indians sprang from the forest trees, according to the myth of the leaves, lived in the shadow of the pleasant woods, so at last, they were received into the strong, embracing branches that tossed over them in wild gestures when the Great Spirit spoke in anger from the sky; that tempered the Summer's heat into cooling shadow for their repose; that shed their gift of crimson leaves upon the Indians' devoted heads even as they, themselves, must shed the garb of flesh before the blast of death. ”

“ And that light lures us on by its thrall to higher altitudes. Down the gorges the snow gathers in deepening drifts and the utmost peaks are white as carven ivory. Still we resolve to make one brave dash for the Quartz Lakes, set one above the other in a chain among sheltering cañons and flanking cliffs. Under the inspiration of the camp fire we discuss the morrow's journey. How splendid it will be to race with the sun; to dare the sudden blizzard that might cut off our retreat, for one brief glimpse of that Upper World we have grown to love with a passion akin to madness. ”

“ The painted, war-bent Blackfeet were gone far back into their fastnesses, but here and there, thick and fast, came the white settler, peaceful, cold, inevitable, overwhelming, bringing ruin to the old life and its people—the beginning of the end. And that calm, just Mother of Mankind would have seen the timid shadow-shapes of the Selish melting into the gathering twilight, at once welcoming the stranger to the land and relinquishing it to him, retiring step by step before the great, white inundation. ”

“ The whole earth is under the spell of the mad, sweet witchery. The forests are decked in a gay masquerade, too glorious to be real, and our own sober senses are half-mastered by the delusion that the dead Summer is come to life again. In open places where the fingers of the sun still warm the moist ground, absent-minded bluebells, strawberries and yellow violets bloom on forgetful that they should already be taking their winter's rest. And it is strange with what pleasure we seize upon these fragile blossom-friends; with what childish joy we caress their pale petals so soon to be laid low. ”

“ The years pass on unheeded, the face of the land has changed, is changing, will change, and the rustling, swirling leaves of Autumn fall thick and fast. Mayhap, after all, the old Magic Master, keeping his eternal vigil, may see from beyond the flesh the thinning woods and the dead leaves dropping from the trees; hear their weary rustle—poor ghosts, as they flutter before the wintry wind. And among the lessening trees, also driven by the Northern blast, does he see also, a gaunt and silent troop of phantoms—mere Autumn leaves—whirling away before the Storm? ”

“ No Indian, however brave, pitches his tipi by this lake nor crosses its waters, for among the tangle of weeds in its black, mysterious bosom, water sirens are believed to dwell. Ever watchful of human prey they gaze upward from their mossy couches and if a boatman venture out in his frail canoe, they rise, entwining their strangling, white arms about him, pressing him with kisses poisonous as the serpent's sting, breathing upon him their blighting, deadly-sweet breath that dulls his senses into the oblivion of eternal sleep. ”

“ It is a small, snowy blossom of five petals and a golden heart, growing on a slender stem from a cluster of glossy, earth-clinging leaves, and as though to hide its chaste, shy beauty, the modest flower turns its face downward towards the ground. Its scent is strong and heavy like that of the magnolia. The guide, who travels the mountains over from the earliest budding to the ultimate passing of the flowers, has never seen this stranger blossom before, and we find it on no other trail. ”

“ The intense blue of the cloudless sky arches overhead, the royal waters of the lake flow blue and green with the colours of a peacock's tail or the variegated232 beauty of an abalone shell; sweeping upward from the shores are tall, timbered hills, so thickly sown with pine that each tree seems but a spear of grass and the whole forest but a lawn, and towering beyond, yet seeming very near in the pure, white light, is a host of peaks silvered with the benediction of the clouds—the deathless snow. ”

“ A wonderful revelation it must have been when the Indian guide, leading the priests through a pass in the mountains, the secret of his people, showed them the vast sea of flowing green—the valley of Sin-yal-min—barred to the East by the range of the same name. There ever-changing shades of violet and lights of gold altered the mien of these mountains whose jagged peaks showed white with snow, from whose deep bosoms burst a water-fall plunging from mighty altitudes into the emerald bowl of the valley. ”

“ Before the pressure of civilization, encroaching in ever-narrowing circles upon the hunting-ground of the Indians, cramping and crowding them within a smaller space, driving them inch by inch to the confinement which is their death, the Selish wandered at will over a stretch of country beautiful alike in the reality of its landscape and in the richness of myth and legend which hang over every peak and transfigure every lake and stream. ”

“ But however truly the Indians loved their new teachers, the robes noires, and however sincerely they accepted the tenets of their faith, they still persisted in buffalo hunts, which twice a year took them into the contested country, and upon these expeditions, fired with excitement, alive with all the heritage of passion inspired by the chase, the war path and the intoxication of glory handed down to them through an ancestry so ancient as to be lost in the dimness of beginnings, they forgot for a time, at least, the life of order, industry and religion they had pledged themselves to lead. ”

“ The ground-cedar, a minute and delicate plant; strange varieties of fern and moss,260 and everchanging, unfamiliar flowers appear as we ascend, until, wheeling dizzily hundreds of feet above the basin upon the slight and slippery trail, with things beneath dwarfed by distance into a pigmy world and things above looming formidably, the increasing altitude shears the rocks and leaves them bare and grim. The air grows sharp with icy chill, great billowy, low-trailing clouds drag over the mountain-tops, down the ravines and float in detached banners in free spaces below. ”

“ Each fallen log, each boulder wrested from its place and hurled down by glacier or avalanche, is dressed in a faery garb of moss and tiny, fragrant shell-pink bells called twinflowers, because two blossoms, perfect twins, always hang pendent from a single stem as slender as spun glass, and these small bells scent the air with an odour as sweet as heliotrope. Within the forest dim with perpetual twilight, one feels the vastness of great spaces, the silence of great solitudes. ”

“ They cherish, too, a more personal grief in that they shall live to see the passing of the old life. Patiently they submitted to the expulsion from the Bitter Root, but now in the darkness of gathering years once more they must strike their tipis to make room for the invading hosts. The setting sun streamed through the leaves and touched the venerable faces with false youth. Wagon and pony discharged their human loads who sat passively, listening to the admonition of the tom-tom and the chant:
"Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!" ”

“ LAKE McDONALD AND ITS TRAIL IN the northern part of Montana, towards the Canadian border, the Main Range of the Rocky Mountains has been rent and carved by glacial action during ages gone by, until the peaks, like tusks, stand separate and distinct in a mighty, serrated line. No one of these reaches so great a height as Shasta, Rainier or Hood, but here the huge, horned spine rises almost sheer from the sweep of tawny prairie, and not one, but hosts of pinnacles, sharp as lances, stand clean cut against the sky. ”

“ A handsome new church, frescoed by an Italian brother, does service instead of the old chapel, venerable with age that hides behind the sheltering trees. In front of the modern church stands the great, wooden Cross erected by the early fathers, which the Indians kneel to kiss before they go to Mass. And to the right, covered with wild grass, and that neglect of which such vagrant growths are the emblem, is the old cemetery where so many weary pilgrims who travelled long and painfully over difficult trails, have sought peace past the power of dreams to disturb. ”

“ A swift, tumultuous stream rushing down a steep, narrow channel, clean-cut as a sabre stroke, dashes headlong into a rainbow-ridden fall. The volume of water is churned into a passion of swirling foam that flings its light mist heavenward to descend again in rain. Ferny, mist-fed, moss-grown banks slope gently to the declivity and over smooth, emerald cushions, lacy leaf and trailing boughs, tiny, crystal drops, glinting prismatic hues, tremble and pass away. ”

“ Beneath the overhanging verdure, around and upon the mossy rocks, the ever-present twinflowers open their delicate petals and sweeten the air, and from clumps of coarse grass rise cones of minute white blossoms, the bear-grass, one of the most curious of the mountain flowers. This ranger knows the common names of nearly all the plants, and at every turn new varieties spring up. He stops to gather each kind of bloom until we have a great bouquet—a potpourri of all the floral beauty of the multitudes that people our path. ”

“ These empty fastnesses thrilled to the shock of thousands of beating hoofs, these hills flung back the echo to the brooding silence as the black tide flowed on, pressed by deadly huntsmen armed with barb and bow. And even then, far over the horizon, unseen by hunted and hunters, silent as the shadow of a cloud, inevitable as destiny, came the White Race, moving swifter than either one, driving them unawares toward the great abyss where they should vanish forever into the Happy Hunting Ground, lighted by perpetual Summer and peopled by immortal herds and tribes. ”

“ The forest sleeps. Long, mystical fancy-bearing moments and tens of moments pass, and something of awe closes down with the gloaming. Then through the dim, monkish grey shadow pulses a red-gold stream of light that runs in long, uneven streamers across the face of the grim, dark walls, transfiguring them into radiant shapes of living golden-rose. In that effulgence of glory, lost peaks gleam for254 a second out of the dusk and vanish into nothingness again, snowy diadems flash into being and fade like a dream. ”

“ So it seems fitting that McDonald's Peak and Lake should remain untamed even as their namesake; that the eddying whirlpool of life should pass them by and that in their embrace the native creatures should live and range as of yore. And may it be that within those shadowy gorges, remote from the sight and hearing of man, a wild, white horse goes bounding through the night? ”

“ The purplish-green point draws nearer, log cabins appear among the trees, each one decorated with a bear skin hung near its door. This is a fur trading center as well as a resort of nature lovers, and upon the broad porch of the club house is a heap of pelts of silver tip, black and brown bear, mountain lion and lynx, and from the walls within, bighorn sheep and mountain goats' heads peer down. The trappers themselves, quaint, old hunters of the wilderness, come out of their retreats to trade. ”