Alta

“ And thenceforward, down by Blue Cañon, Alta, Dutch Flat, and all the old mining camps, through a sea of mountain forests, dropping thousands of feet toward the far sea-level as we went, not I only, but all the passengers on board, threw off their sense of dirt and heat and weariness, and bawled like schoolboys, and thronged with shining eyes upon the platform and became new creatures within and without. The sun no longer oppressed us with heat, it only shone laughingly along the mountain-side, until we were fain to laugh ourselves for glee. ”

“ The air becomes much cooler as the elevation increases. At last the Alta da Serra, the top of the mountain, is reached, and from there it is an easy ride down to Petropolis nestling between lofty peaks. ”

“ They galloped away along the road over the old ford.
“Let’s take the trail close to the creek,” he suggested; “perhaps we shall scare up some chickens. I hate the old sage brush trail anyway.”
“Hate the sagebrush!” exclaimed Alta. “Why that’s one of the most interesting things in this wild West. It makes a fine shaggy blanket for this craggy country; and its purple gray color blends wonderfully with the surroundings.”
“That may be true enough,” replied Fred, “judging from an artist’s viewpoint; but it isn’t so pleasant to ride through.” ”

“ Or I’d like to take a party of literary men across the Altai, and in a verdant valley live for half a year without letters and newspapers, and each write his own book, express his own peculiar happiness in his own words. ”

“ As Lesbee watched, blood seeped through and dripped to the floor.
"Are you going to hold an election?" Tellier asked.
The big ship had turned back under Lesbee's command, and had picked up his friends. The lifeboat itself, with the remaining Karn still aboard, was put into an orbit around Alta III and abandoned. ”

“ As the lifeboat fell toward Alta III, Lesbee and Tellier sat in the twin control chairs and watched on the forward screen the vast, misty atmosphere of the planet.
Tellier was thin and intellectual, a descendant of the physicist Dr. Tellier who had made many speed experiments in the early days of the voyage. It had never been understood why spaceships could not attain even a good fraction of the speed of light, let alone velocities greater than light. When the scientist met his untimely death, there was no one with the training to carry on a testing program. ”

“ Since the Karn were utilizing it directly, they couldn't be living beings.
Therefore, Dzing and his fellows were an advanced robot type.
The true inhabitants of Alta III were not risking their own skins at all.
Far more important to Lesbee, he could see how he might use these marvellous mechanisms to defeat Browne, take over the Hope of Man, and start the long journey back to Earth. ”

“ Nearer the coast there are some plains formed from the wreck of the upper plain, and from mud, gravel, and sand thrown up by the sea during the slow elevation of the land, of which elevation we have evidence in upraised beds of recent shells, and in rounded pebbles of pumice scattered over the country. At Punta Alta we have a section of one of these later-formed little plains, which is highly interesting from the number and extraordinary character of the remains of gigantic land-animals embedded in it. ”

“ One hundred and nine years after leaving Earth, the spaceship, Hope of Man, went into orbit around Alta III.
The following "morning" Captain Browne informed the shipload of fourth and fifth generation colonists that a manned lifeboat would be dropped to the planet's surface.
"Every member of the crew must consider himself expendable," he said earnestly. "This is the day that our great grandparents, our forefathers, who boldly set out for the new space frontier so long ago, looked forward to with unfaltering courage. We must not fail them." ”

“ With singular lack of understanding of the attitude of the Mexican government toward the intrusion of Americans upon its domain, 'While in the City of Mexico he made arrangements to become an empresarias for settling the interior of Alta California with emigrants from his own and other civilized lands, intending to commence the work, when the tide of emigration to those western shores should set high, and it should be practicable to take that position. ”

“ The great mountain system of the Altai, (the “gold mountains” of Menander of Byzantium, an historical writer who lived as early as the 7th century, the Altaï-alin of the Moguls, and the Kin-schan of the Chinese) , forms the southern boundary of the great Siberian lowlands; and running between 50° and 521⁄2° of north latitude, extends from the rich silver mines of the Snake Mountains, and the confluence of the Uba and the Irtysh, to the meridian of Lake Baikal. ”

“ From that time the mountain bore the name of him who was supposed to make his abode in its depths, and no man's foot intruded among its lonely defiles and savage canons until the Los Americanos, who feared neither God, man, nor devil, came and possessed the land, carried their surveying instruments to its summit, and there set up a rude monument of stone, which serves as a base for the surveys throughout all Alta California. ”

“ The area covered by perpetual snow is very considerable, and glaciers occupy a large area. In the high lands the winter is very severe, but on the whole the climate is comparatively mild and is also healthy. The flora of the Altai Mountains greatly resembles that of the Alps, about five-sixths of the latter being found here. The mountain forests are composed of birch, alder, aspen, fir, larch, stone-pine, &c. The wild sheep has here its native home, and several kinds of deer are found. The Altai is exceedingly rich in minerals, including gold, silver, copper, and iron. ”

“ ALIT (Cym.-Cel.) ,
ALT (Irish) ,
a height or cliff; e.g. Alltmaur (the great height) ; Builth, in Wales, i.e. Bu-allt (the steep place of the wild oxen) . The Alts (heights or glen-sides) , Monaghan; Altachullion (the cliff of the holly) ; Altavilla, i.e. Alt-a-bhile (the glen-side of the old tree) ; Altinure (the cliff of the yew-tree) ; Altanagh (abounding in cliffs) ; Altan (the little cliff) .
ALP, AILPE (Celtic) ,
AIL,
a rock or cliff; e.g. the Alps; Albainn (the hilly or high land) , the anc. name of Scotland; Albania, with the same meaning ”

“ In other words, more than half of the peasants who made a journey of fifteen hundred miles to the Altai came back simply because they could not satisfactorily establish themselves in the country where they had hoped to find more land and better conditions of life. ”

“ Altars should face the east, and should always be placed on a lower level than are the statues in the temples, so that those who are praying and sacrificing may look upwards towards the divin­ity. ”

“ Mr. Ball, the first mountaineer who explored this country, adhered, on his first visit, to the name given by the Survey to the N. peak, and to the S. gave the name of Cima di Brenta or Brenta Alta. Lieutenant Payer followed Mr. Ball's example in his article on the Bocca di Brenta in the fifth volume of the Austrian Alpine Club's Publication.
When, however, in 1865, Mr. Ball made from Molveno the first ascent of the S. peak, he found that his guide, a native of that village, knew it as 'La Tosa.' Mr. ”

“ I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little way, which I ascend in my dreams both awake and asleep. Its broad base spreads over a village or two, which does not know it; neither does it know them, nor do I when I ascend it. I can see its general outline as plainly now in my mind as that of Wachusett. I do not invent in the least, but state exactly what I see. I find that I go up it when I am light-footed and earnest. It ever smokes like an altar with its sacrifice. I am not aware that a single villager frequents it or knows of it. I keep this mountain to ride instead of a horse. ”

“ Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale, blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline, chained round the whole horizon. ”

“ The Bernese Alps in miniature. A dark violet sea, and Alps in burnished silver, with the colors of the rainbow dissolving among them. Lofty ridges, of the shape of flames, have the tint of flame; out of the purity of lilies bloom the pink and rose; sky-blue shadows sleep in the defiles; I will not say cloth of gold drapes, but water of gold washes—water of green, of orange, scarlet, crimson, purple, wash the crags and steeps; strange metallic tints gleam in the shaggy caverns—copper, bronze, and gold. Endless grace of form and outline!—endless, endless beauty! ”

“ Instinctively we summon up recollections of the Alps for comparison with the mountains we are leaving. And the comparison is not found to be entirely a sacrilege. The Alps are first and preeminent among European mountains; the repose of their immensity, the sense of power, the indefinable, spell they exert, lesser ranges cannot in general features attempt to rival. But this is not to say that a lesser range, is a wholly inferior range,—that even in this effect of immensity, of power, it may not at certain points bear almost full comparison. ”

“ I had never before realized the great depth of feeling that a mountain range is capable of evoking. The Alps are majestic beyond description. They awe the observer to a sense of his own utter insignificance as he gazes upon that glistening majestic sky-line, and feels the overwhelming influence of those mighty mountains upon him. ”

“ Indeed, all these Alps are in shape more abrupt and fantastic than any I ever saw.
I wish I could by my imperfect words bring before you not only the grander features, but every minute peculiarity, every varying hue, of this matchless scene. The progress of each day brings with it its appropriate change. When I rise in the morning and look out, our own side is bathed in sunshine, and we see the opposite mountains raising 68their black masses in sharp relief against the eastern sky, while dark shadows are flung by the abrupt precipices on the fair lake beneath. ”

“ ALPINE HERDSMEN.
“This same lover of mountains finds even the snow different. On the Jura it falls on dark-green firs and pines and, mingling with the dreary foliage, gives forth only a sad and cautious half-smile. But in the Alps the white snow makes the mountains joyous. He compares it to a virginal mantle, embroidered with green and azure. When the morning has, for them, brought on the early day, they seem to sing gaily their reveille and their youth; a hymn of light floats high in the air above their heads and finds an echo of joy and of love in the hearts of mortals. ”

“ The spirit of the world hath here not yet grown old. She is as young as on the first day; and the Alps are a symbol of the self-creating, self-sufficing, self-enjoying universe which lives for its own ends. For why do the slopes gleam with flowers, and the hillsides deck themselves with grass, and the inaccessible ledges of black rock bear their tufts of crimson primroses and flaunting tiger-lilies? Why, morning after morning, does the red dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded? ”

“ Hence, on the score even of sublimity, the superiority of the Alps is by no means so great as might hastily be inferred;—and, as to the beauty of the lower regions of the Swiss Mountains, it is noticeable—that, as they are all regularly mown, their surface has nothing of that mellow tone and variety of hues by which mountain turf, that is never touched by the scythe, is distinguished. ”

“ Though not high, as heights go in the European Alps or in the Himalaya, they are imposing mountains. It is only within comparatively recent years that passes have been discovered between the lakes and the sounds; and although these passes do not lead the traveller beyond the sub-Alpine heights, they take him through scenery that is no less remarkable for its beauty than for its grandeur—a fitting introduction to those greater marvels in the heart of the Southern Alps. ”

“ The Alps, after passing up along the eastern boundary of Piedmont, irregularly in long, deep bends and winding arches, run east and west, gathering upon their flanks innumerable lesser ranges, and knots of mountains, or in places subdividing into new and splendid lines of peaks which, diverging to the north, afterward unite with the parent chain or melt into the plain of Germany, through successive steps. ”

“ The great Alps, a wonder in the starlight - the river, strong from the hills, and turbulent, and loudly audible at night - the country, a scented FRUHLINGSGARTEN of orchards and deep wood where the nightingales harbour - a sort of German flavour over all - and this love-drunken man, wandering on by sleeping village and silent town, pours out of his full heart, EINST, O WUNDER, EINST, etc. ”

“ The Pyrenees form a chain of nearly three hundred miles long, and upwards of fifty broad—a province of mountains, intersected by valleys of romantic beauty and exuberant fertility. But the Alps, from their position between the two most brilliant nations of the Continent—France and Italy—and from the extraordinary series of memorable events of which they have been the theatre, since the earliest periods of European history, are the most celebrated range of mountains in the world. ”

“ It is not by the splendor of far-off views, which have lent such a glory to the Alps, that these impress the mind, but by a gigantic disorder of enormous masses and a savage sublimity of naked rock in wonderful contrast with innumerable green spots of a rich floral beauty shut up in their stern recesses. Their wildness seems well suited to the character of the people who inhabit the country. ”