* Obviously, Mt. Rainier.—A.D.H.S.
Tawannears expelled his breath with a sigh of contentment, and I rushed into hurried speech to restrain the certain disappointment I felt he was laying up for himself.
"Nonsense, 'tis only a mountain, bigger than others," I said. "Think, brother! You will—"
"It may be a mountain," returned Tawannears quietly. "But is that a reason why it may not be the Great Spirit Himself?"
"Ja," affirmed Corlaer, "if der Greadt Spbirit come to earth, I guess he come as a mountain, eh? Ja, dot's it."
I remembered the wolf brothers, and desisted in an attempt which I knew could not succeed. And for the remainder of the evening Tawannears was occupied in securing information on the route to the base of Tamanoas. In the morning, our hosts loaded us with food and saw us on our way. They made no endeavor to restrain us. Indeed, they seemed to think we could accomplish anything. A Great Spirit, which was white, they reasoned, ought to be glad to see two white men. Tawannears, they considered, would be accepted on our guarantee. We bade them farewell with sorrow. They were the noblest Indians we found beyond the Sky Mountains.
CHAPTER XII
THE ALTAR OF TAMANOAS
We made our last camp in a glade strewn with wild-flowers that was rimmed by one of the dingy glaciers, hanging like out-thrust arms along the mountain's flanks. High overhead, several miles in the still sky, soared the blunted cone of the summit, silver-white at the peak, shading to a deeper tone where black hulks of rock cropped up through the snow-mantle, and steel-gray farther down where the ice-rivers of the glaciers crawled beneath loads of rock-dust and pebble-bowlders, wrenched from earth's fabric by their resistless flow.
Below the glaciers came the zone of wild-flowers, miles and miles of them, casting their pollen into the air in the midst of icy desolation, banding the heights with a cincture of fragrant beauty. Then, a mile nearer earth's level, stood the timber-line; first, straggling dwarf growths, bent and gnarled and twisted by the winds; behind these the massive bulwark of the primeval forest, stout cedars and cumbrous firs, the least of them fit for main-mast to a King's ship, a green frame for the many-colored miracle of the flower-fields and the white splendor above.