All that night the storm raged. All that night Captain Blunt and his party shivered in their cave, while at the fort Leonard waited and watched.
Book Three—Chapter Two.
Fighting with Indians.
“But yonder comes the powerful king of day
Rejoicing in the east. The lessening cloud,
The kindling azure, and the mountain’s brow
Illumed with gold, his near approach
Betoken glad.”
Thomson.
Scene: The fort in the Rocky Mountains. Morning breaking in the east. Wind hushed. Captain Blunt and party making their way along the bottom of the cañon, which in many places is deep in drifted snow.
Who can paint in words the beauty, the glory of a sunrise among the mountains? Why wish to be a poet—even a Longfellow?
Why wish to be even a Turner? for what artist that ever lived could sketch in colour the deep blue of yonder sky, or the great grey clouds that, even as we look change slowly to yellow and gold; or that strip of crimson, or the darkness of those pine trees outshining from the blue uncertain horizon’s haze?