“ The undulating meadows between the shady groves are brilliant in summer with a veritable carpet of gorgeous blossoms. In contrast to the exquisite charms of the groves and flower-decked rolling meadows are desolate ice fields and rugged glaciers which vary, through many tints and shades, from silvery whiteness to intense blue. Added to these minor charms, and towering far above them, is the massive summit of Rainier. At times the sublime mountain appears steel blue in the unclouded sky, or rosy with the afterglow at sunset, or all aflame with the glories of the newborn day. ”

“ After a night's rest in the shelter of the forest, lulled to sleep by the roar of Carbon River in its tumultuous course after its escape from the ice caverns, we climbed the heavily moraine-covered extremity of Carbon Glacier. At night, weary with carrying heavy packs [163] over the chaos of stones that cover the glaciers, we slept on a couch of moss beautified with lovely blossoms, almost within the spray of Philo Falls, a cataract of clear icy water that pours into the canyon of Carbon Glacier from snow fields high up on the western wall of the canyon. ”

“ One August afternoon, Van Trump and I drove out to Yelm Prairie, thirty miles east of Olympia, and on the Nisqually River. We dashed rapidly on over a smooth, hard, level road, traversing wide reaches of prairie, passing under open groves of oaks and firs, and plunging through masses of black, dense forest in ever-changing variety. The moon had risen as we emerged upon Yelm Prairie; Takhoma, bathed in cold, white, spectral light from summit to base, appeared startlingly near and distinct. ”

“ Another region, worthy of any [40] mountain's beholding, Tacoma sees, somewhat vague and dim in distance: it sees the sweet Arcadian valley of the Willamette, charming with meadow, park, and grove. In no older world where men have, in all their happiest moods, recreated themselves for generations in taming earth to orderly beauty, have they achieved a fairer garden than Nature's simple labor of love has made there, giving to rough pioneers the blessings and the possible education of refined and finished landscape, in the presence of landscape strong, savage, and majestic. ”

“ You must creep over steep snow banks and cross deep crevasses where a mountain goat could hardly keep his footing. You must climb along steep cliffs where rocks are continually falling to crush you, or knock you off into the bottomless depths.
And if you should escape these perils and reach the great snowy dome, then a bitterly cold and furious tempest will sweep you off into space like a withered leaf. But if by some miracle you should survive all these perils the mighty demon of Takhoma will surely kill you and throw you into the fiery lake. ”

“ Takhoma, he said, was an enchanted mountain, inhabited by an evil spirit, who dwelt in a fiery lake on its summit. No human being could ascend it or even attempt its ascent, and survive. At first, indeed, the way was easy. The broad snow-fields, over which he had so often hunted the mountain goat, interposed no obstacle, but above them the rash adventurer would be compelled to climb up steeps of loose, rolling rocks, which would turn beneath his feet and cast him head-long into the deep abyss below. ”

“ We were to climb the main ridge,—the mountain of La Tête,—abandoning the valley, assaulting the summits. And here, as Owhhigh had prophesied in his harangue at Nisqually, the horse's mane must be firmly grasped by the climber. Poor, panting, weary nags! may it be true, the promise of Loolowcan, that not far away is abundant fodder! But where can aught, save firs with ostrich digestion, grow on these rough, forest-clad shoulders? ”

“ Tacoma was so white and glittering, that it seemed to stare at him very terribly and mockingly, and to know his shameful avarice, and how it led him to take from starving women their cherished lip and nose jewels of hiaqua, and to give them in return only tough scraps of dried elk-meat and salmon. When men are shabby, mean, and grasping, they feel reproached for their grovelling lives by the unearthliness of nature's beautiful objects, and they hate flowers, and sunsets, mountains, and the quiet stars of heaven. ”

“ Early in the evening we reached the foot of an immense glacier and camped. For several miles before camping the bed of the stream was paved with white granite bowlders, and the mountain gorge became narrower and narrower. The walls were in many places perpendicular precipices, thousands of feet high, their summits hid in the clouds. Vast piles of snow were to be seen along the stream—the remains of avalanches—for earth, trees, and rocks were intermingled with the snow. ”

“ The beautiful balsam firs, about thirty feet in height, and of a purple, dark-green color, stood scattered over the landscape, now singly, now in groves, and now in long lines, as though planted in some well-kept park. Farther down an unbroken fir forest surrounded the mountain and clad the lower portions of the ridges and valleys. In every sheltered depression or hollow lay beds of snow with tiny brooks and rivulets flowing from them. ”

“ Mortals, shrinking from the responsibility of a high destiny and dreading to know how divine the Divine would have them, always imagine an avatar of some one not lower than a half-god when a gift of great price comes to the world. And fire is a very priceless and beautiful boon,—not, as most know it, in imprisonment, barred with iron, or in sooty chimneys, or in mad revolt of conflagration,—but as it grows in a flashing pyramid out in camp in the free woods, with eager air hurrying in on every side to feed its glory. ”

“ On the left stretched a wall of steep, rocky mountains, standing parallel to the course of the river and extending far eastward, growing higher and steeper and more rugged as it receded from view. At the very extremity of this range Takhoma loomed aloft, its dome high above all others and its flanks extending far down into the valley, and all covered, dome and flanks, with snow of dazzling white, in striking contrast with the black basaltic mountains about it. ”

“ All this Tacoma beholds, as I can but briefly hint; and as one who is a seer himself becomes a tower of light and illumination to the world, so Tacoma, so every brother seer of his among the lofty snow-peaks, stands to educate, by his inevitable presence, every dweller thereabouts. Our race has never yet come into contact with great mountains as companions of daily life, nor felt that daily development of the finer and more comprehensive senses which these signal facts of nature compel. ”

“ Beyond the glacier are extremely bold and rugged mountains, scantily clothed with forests nearly to their summits. The position of the timber line shows that the bare peaks above are between 8,000 and 9,000 feet high. Looking southward, up the glacier, we have a glimpse into the wild amphitheater in which it has its source. The walls of the great hollow in the mountain side rise in seemingly vertical precipices about 4,000 feet high. Far above is a shining, snow-covered peak, which Willis named the Liberty Cap. It is one of the culminating points of Mount Rainier, but not the actual summit. ”

“ From this point we can see a clear path to the summit. Upward we climb to where the rim of the crater seems but a few hundred feet away. Look! there is a jet of steam right ahead; one grand effort and I sit upon the rim of the crater. I shout a word of triumph which sounds strangely shrill to my companions below, who, one by one, soon gain my exalted position. The feeling of triumph that filled the heart of each one as he gained that sublime height can be realized by no one who has not been in a similar position. ”

“ On either side of the trail worn in the brown soil the ferns and flowering shrubs were bent over in graceful curves, and at times filled the little-used lane, first traversed fifteen years before.
The trail led us to Eagle Cliff, a bold, rocky promontory rising as does El Capitan from the Yosemite, 1,800 feet from the forest-lined canyon of Mowich River. From Eagle Cliff one beholds the most magnificent view that is to be had in all the wonderful region about Mount Rainier. ”

“ The eye willingly passes over this dirty mass to the gleaming northeast spur of the mountain, where the sunlight lingers after the chill night wind has begun to blow from the ice fields.
The disappointment of this view of the glacier leaves one unprepared for the beauty of that from Crescent Mountain. The ascent from a point a short distance down the river is steep, but not dangerous. The lower slopes are heavily timbered, but at an elevation of 4,000 feet juniper and dwarf pine are dotted over the grassy hillside. Elk, deer and white mountain goats find here a pleasant pasture ”

“ Up to an elevation of 4,000 feet or more the flanks of Mount Rainier are clothed in a continuous belt of somber forest, broken only where glaciers and their nascent streams have hewn pathways, or where, alas, fire has left desolate slopes marked here and there by the whitened, weather-worn shaft of some old tree, a dreary monument to its destroyed fellows. ”

“ To the head of Carbon River from the bridge, on which the trail crosses it, is about sixteen miles. The rocky bed of the river is 100 to 200 yards wide, a gray strip of polished boulders between sombre mountain slopes, that rise sharply from it. The stream winds in ever-shifting channels among the stones. About six miles above the bridge Milk Creek dashes down from its narrow gorge into the river. The high pinnacles of the spur from which it springs are hidden by the nearer fir-clad ridges. Between their outlines shines the northern peak of Mount Tacoma, framed in dark evergreen spires. ”

“ There are very few birds. Blue jays, and their less showy gray, but equally impudent, cousins, the "whiskey jacks," assemble about a camp; but in passing through the forest one may wander a whole day and see no living thing save a squirrel, whose shrill chatter is startling amid the silence. The wind plays in the tree tops far overhead, but seldom stirs the branches of the smaller growth. The great tree trunks stand immovable. The more awful is it when a gale roars through the timber; when the huge columns sway in unison and groan with voices strangely human. ”

“ Down the mountain range seems nothing after our long laborious up; "the half is more than the whole." "Lead on, Loolowcan, intelligent brave, toward the residence of the late Sowee."
More fair prairies linked themselves along the trail. From these alpine pastures the future will draw butter and cheese, pasturing migratory cattle there, when summer dries the scanty grass upon the macadamized prairies of Whulge. It is well to remind ourselves sometimes that the world is not wholly squatted over. The plateau soon began to ebb toward the downward slope. ”

“ On the right the rock towered far above us perpendicularly. On the left it fell sheer off, two thousand feet, into a vast abyss. A great glacier filled its bed and stretched away for several miles, all seamed or wrinkled across with countless crevasses. We crept up and along a ledge, not of solid, sure rock, but one obstructed with the loose stones and débris which were continually falling from above, and we trod on the upper edge of a steep slope of this rubbish, sending the stones at every step rolling and bounding into the depth below. ”

“ Cascading from the summit in all directions, they radiate like the arms of a great starfish. All reach down to the foot of the mountain and some advance considerably beyond.
As for the plea that these glaciers lie in a scarcely opened, out-of-the-way region, a forbidding wilderness as compared with maturely civilized Switzerland, it no longer has the force it once possessed. Rainier's ice fields can now be reached from Seattle or Tacoma, the two principal cities of western Washington, in a comfortable day's journeying, either by rail or by automobile. ”

“ This crowning snow mound, which was once supposed to be the highest point in the United States, still bears the proud name of Columbia Crest. It is essentially a huge snowdrift or snow dune, heaped up by the westerly winds. Driving furiously up through the great breach in the west flank of the mountain, between Peak Success and Liberty Cap, they eddy lightly as they shoot over the summit and there deposit their load of snow. ”