Book Three—Chapter One.
Adventures in the Rocky Mountains.
“Far in the west there lies a desert land, where the mountains
Lift through perpetual snows their lofty and luminous summits;
Billowy bays of grass, ever rolling in shadow and sunshine;
Over them wander the buffalo herds and the elk and the roebuck;
Over them wander the wolves, and herds of riderless horses;
Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael’s children,
Staining the desert with blood: and above their terrible war trails,
Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture,
Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle.”
Longfellow.
Scene: A green sea tempest-tossed, the waves houses high. White clouds massed along the windward horizon, giving the appearance not only of ice-clad rocks and towers, but of a great mountainous snow-land. And above this a broad lift of deepest blue, and higher still—like the top scene on a stage—a curtain-cloud of driving hail. One ship visible, staggering along with but little sail on her.
It was near sunset when Captain Blunt came below to the cabin of the Gloaming Star. “It is a bitter night, Leonard,” he said, rubbing his hand and chafing his ears. “The wind is as cold as ever we felt it in Greenland.”
“Blowing right off the ice, isn’t it?”
“Yes, with a bit of west in it, and I do think somehow that the wind of the Antarctic is keener, rawer, and colder than any that ever blows across the pack at the other Pole.”
Soon after this Leonard himself went on deck. Here was his friend Douglas, muffled up in a monkey-jacket with a sou’-wester on his head, and great woollen gloves on his hands, tramping up and down the deck as if for a wager.
“How do you like it, Doug?”