yon that I—for this was my first visit to Rainier—might see the Nisqually Glacier.
And, as we made dur way upward through the brightening scene, as I gazed upon the grim cosmic beauty all about me, up into the great cirque of the Nisqually, up to the broad summit of the mountain and (in the opposite direction) out over the Tatoosh Range to distant Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens all violet and gold in the morning sun—well, that strange story which had brought us here then took on the seeming of a mirage or a dream.
"The mountain," said Milton Rhodes, as we stood leaning on our alpenstocks during one of our halts, "once rose to a height of 16,000 feet or more. The dip of the lava layers shows that. The whole top was blown clean off."
"Must have been some fireworks then," was my comment.
"See that line of bare rocks on the very summit, Bill, midway between Point Success up here on the left and Gibraltar on the right?"
"I noticed that. Why isn't there any snow there?"
"Heat, Bill," said Rhodes. "Heat."
"Heat! Great Vesuvius, I thought that Rainier was a dead volcano."
"Not dead, Bill. Only slumbering. Four eruptions are on record.[1] Whether Old He is to die in his slumber or whether he is one day to awake in mad fury—that, of course, no man can tell us."
"To see it belching forth smoke and sending down streams of lava would be an interesting sight certainly," said I. "And I wonder what effect that would have on this Drome business—that is, if there is any such thing as Drome at all."
"Drome!" Milton echoed.
For some moments he stood there with a strange look of abstraction upon his face.
"Drome! Ah, Bill," said he, "I wish I knew what it means. But come, we'll never reach the Tamahnowis Rocks if we stand here wondering."
And so we resumed our climb. We were the early birds this morning; not a living soul was to be seen anywhere on the mountain. But hark! What was that? Somebody whistling somewhere up there and off to the right. The whistles came in rapid succession—loud and clear and ringing. I stopped and looked but could see nothing.
I should have explained that we had turned aside from the edge of the canyon, had crossed that little stream mentioned by Grandfather Scranton and had begun to climb that steep rocky mass he spoke of.
"What the deuce," said I, "is that fellow whistling like that for? It can't be to us."
"That," Milton Rhodes smiled, "isn't a man, Bill."
"Not a man!"
"It's a marmot," Milton told me. "A marmot? Well," said I, "we live and we learn. I could have sworn, Milton, that it was a human being."
The ascent was a steep one, and we climbed in silence. The horse-trail, coming from the left, goes slanting and then twisting its way up this' rocky rampart. On reaching the path, we paused for some minutes to get our breath, then plodded on.
"I was thinking," said Milton at last, "of what Parkman said."
"What did he say?"
"'I would go farther for one look into the crater of Vesuvius than to see all the ruined temples in Italy.'"
"I wonder," I returned, "how far
we shall have to go to see that angel
- ↑ "At this time [November, 1843] two of the great snowy cones, Mount Regnier and St. Helens, were in action. On the 23d of the preceding November, St. Helens had scattered its ashes, like a white fall of snow, over the Dalles of the Columbia, 50 miles distant. A specimen of these ashes was given to me by Mr. Brewer, one of the clergymen at the Dalles,"—Fremont.
