[1]tain composed of earth, sand, and stone, including common rocks, there were certain peaks resembling a loaf of sugar, from a hundred or two hundred feet high; and some appeared much higher; I cannot guess their height. They were to us surprising. Their sides deviated but little from perpendicular. They looked at a distance like some light-houses of a conical form, or like our Cambridge glass manufactories; but how they acquired that form is wonderful. Subsiding waters may have left them so, after washing away sandy materials. But nature is altogether wonderful, in her large works as well as small. How little do we know of the first cause of any thing! We had to creep round the base of these steep edifices of nature. We now more clearly understand and relish the question of one of our Indians who was carried to England as a show, who, on being shown that elegant pile of stone, the cathedral of St. Paul, after viewing it in silent admiration, asked his interpreter whether it was made by men's hands, or whether it grew there. We might ask the same question of respecting these conical mountains. Has the scaffolding of St. Paul's remained, the surprise and wonder of the sensible savage had been less.
It was difficult to keep our feet on these highest parts of hte mountains; some of the pack-horses slipped and rolled over and over, and yet were taken up alive. Those that did not fall were sadly bruised and lamed in their feet and joints. Mules are best calculated, as we experienced, for such difficult travelling. They seem to think, and to judge [39] of the path before them, and will sometimes put their fore feet together and slip down without stepping. They are as sagacious in crossing a river, where there is
- ↑ was discovered, but probably by some of Ashley's parties in 1823. The ascent is so gradual that, although 7,500 feet above sea-level, its elevation is not perceived, and in 1843 Frémont could with difficult tell just hwere he crossed the highest point of the divide.—Ed.
