The awakening of the desert . ce of the train,which on an exceedingly hot July day was toiling up along and difficult sandy grade, I reached a flat summitfrom which there suddenly and unexpectedly burst uponmy view the entire panorama of the lofty peaks of theWind River range, from Fremont Peak to South were crowned with a diadem of snow, but werenot in a robe of clouds, for not a speck of mist wasvisible in any direction. The mountains in all their detailstood out against the blue sky with wonderful clearness andit seemed as if they were not ten miles away. I may havebeen unduly exc
The awakening of the desert . ce of the train,which on an exceedingly hot July day was toiling up along and difficult sandy grade, I reached a flat summitfrom which there suddenly and unexpectedly burst uponmy view the entire panorama of the lofty peaks of theWind River range, from Fremont Peak to South were crowned with a diadem of snow, but werenot in a robe of clouds, for not a speck of mist wasvisible in any direction. The mountains in all their detailstood out against the blue sky with wonderful clearness andit seemed as if they were not ten miles away. I may havebeen unduly excited, but in calling to those below me, whowere next in advance, I shouted that the snow mountainswere in sight. One after another of the party soon arrivedat the summit, and being considerably heated after theclimb they had made under the sharp rays of the sun,some of the men insisted that the brilliant white on thedistant peaks was not snow. As one driver put it, Doyou think Im a fool, to think that snow wouldnt melt in 252. A SPECTACULAR BUFFALO CHASE 253 hot weather like this? This man from the prairie didnot appreciate the towering height of those far awaypeaks. On the following morning we were informed thatthey were still thirty miles away, and after two more daysof travel, we were told that even then Fremont Peak wasnearly one hundred miles beyond us. Fred accordinglydeclared that we should never reach it unless we turnedback in the other direction, because the longer we traveledtoward it, the further it was away. The day after we obtained our first view of FremontPeak, we knew that we were near a certain strange freakof nature known as Ice Springs. Its location is carefullynoted on the old charts, and it is described in the reportsof numerous explorers and travelers. In every descrip-tion of the springs that I had read or heard, it was statedthat at any time of the year, even in the late summer, asolid mass of ice could be found within a foot of the sur-face. We determi
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectfrontie, bookyear1912
