The road house stands in a large clearing, with barns and other buildings surrounding it. I never saw so many dogs as greeted us, except in Valdez or on the Yukon. They crowded about us, barking and shrieking a welcome. They were all big malamutes.
After a good dinner we went to bed at eight o'clock. The sun was shining brightly, but we darkened our rooms as much as possible, and instantly fell into the sleep of utter exhaustion.
At one o'clock in the morning we were eating breakfast, and half an hour later we were in our saddles and off for the summit of Thompson Pass to see the sun rise. This brought out the humps in the horses' backs again. We went up into the air almost as straight as a telegraph pole. Over heather, ice, flowers, and snow our horses plunged, unspurred.
It was seven miles to the summit. There were no trees nor shrubs,—only grass and moss that gave a velvety look to peaks and slopes that seemed to be floating around us through the silvery mists that were wound over them like turbans. Here and there a hollow was banked with frozen snow.
When we dismounted on the very summit we could hardly step without crushing bluebells and geraniums.
We set the flag of our country on the highest point beside the trail, that every loyal-hearted traveller might salute it and take hope again, if he chanced to be discouraged. Then we sat under its folds and watched the mists change from silver to pearl-gray; from pearl-gray to pink, amethyst, violet, purple,—and back to rose, gold, and flame color.
One peak after another shone out for a moment, only to withdraw. Suddenly, as if with one leap, the sun came over the mountain line; vibrated brilliantly, dazzlingly, flashing long rays like signals to every quickened peak. Then, while we gazed, entranced, other peaks whose presence we had not suspected were brought to life by those searching rays; valleys appeared, filled with purple, brooding shadows; whole slopes blue with bluebells; and, white and hard, the narrow trail that led on to the pitiless land of gold.
We were above the mountain peaks, above the clouds, level with the sun.
Absolute stillness was about us; there was not one faintest sound of nature; no plash of water, nor sough of wind, nor call of a bird. It was so still that it seemed like the beginning of a new world, with the birth of mountains taking place before our reverent eyes, as one after another dawned suddenly and goldenly upon our vision.
Every time we had stopped on the trail we had heard harrowing stories of saddle-horses or pack-horses having missed their footing and gone over the precipice. The horses are so carefully packed, and the packs so securely fastened on—the last cinch being thrown into the "diamond hitch"—that the poor beasts can roll over and over to the bottom of a canyon without disarranging a pack weighing two hundred pounds—a feat which they very frequently perform.