The panorama from Gray's Peak is one to inspire awe and dwell forever in the memory, an alpine wonderland indeed and in truth. To the north, northwest, and west there stretches, as far as the eye can reach, a vast wilderness of snowy peaks and ranges, many of them with a rosy glow in the sunshine, tier upon tier, terrace above terrace, here in serried ranks, there in isolated grandeur, some just beyond the dividing cañons, others fifty, sixty, a hundred miles away, cyclopean, majestic, infinite. Far to the north, Long's Peak lifts his seamed and hoary pyramid, almost as high as the crest on which we are standing; in the west rise that famous triad of peaks, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, their fanelike towers, sketched against the sky, disputing the palm with old Gray himself; while a hundred miles to the south Pike's Peak stands solitary and smiling in the sun, seeming to say, "I am sufficient unto myself!" Between our viewpoint and the last-named mountain lies South Park, like a paradise of green immured by guardian walls of rock and snow, and far to the east, beyond the billowing ranges, white, gray, and green, stretch the limitless plains, vanishing in the hazy distance. In such surroundings one's breast throbs and swells with the thought of Nature's omnipotence.
PANORAMA FROM GRAY'S PEAK—NORTHWEST
The picture includes the northern spur of Gray's Peak, with the dismantled signal station on its crest. The main ridge of the peak extends out to the left of the signal station. The summit is so situated as to be exposed to the sun the greater part of the day; hence, although it is the highest point in the region, there is less snow upon it in summer than upon many of the surrounding elevations. Looking northwest from the signal station, the eye falls upon a wilderness of snow-clad peaks and ranges, some standing in serried ranks, others in picturesque disorder. It is truly an arctic scene, summer or winter. Yet it is the summer home of the brown-capped leucosticte and the white-tailed ptarmigan, which range in happy freedom over the upper story of our country.
The summit of Gray's Peak is a favorable viewpoint from which to study the complexion, the idiosyncrasies, if you please, of individual mountains, each of which seems to have a personality of its own. Here is Gray's Peak itself, calm, smiling, good-natured as a summer morning; yonder is Torrey's, next-door neighbor, cruel, relentless, defiant, always threatening with cyclone or tornado, or forging the thunder-bolts of Vulcan. Some mountains appear grand and dignified, others look like spitfires. On one side some bear smooth and green slopes almost to the top, while the other is scarred, craggy, and precipitous.
The day was serene and beautiful, the sky a deep indigo, unflecked with clouds, save a few filmy wracks here and there, and the breeze as balmy as that of a May morning in my native State. So quiet was the alpine solitude that on all sides we could hear the solemn roar of the streams in the ravines hundreds of feet below, some of them in one key and some in another, making almost a symphony. For several hours we tarried, held by a spell. "But you have forgotten your ornithology!" some one reminds me. No one could blame me if I had. Such, however, is not the case, for ornithology, like the poor, is never far from some of us. The genial little optimists that had been hopping about on the snow on the declivities had acted as our cicerones clear to the summit, and some of them remained there while we tarried. Indeed the leucostictes were quite plentiful on the mountain's brow. Several perched on the dismantled walls of the abandoned government building on the summit, called cheerily, then wheeled about over the crest, darted out and went careering over the gulches with perfect aplomb, while we watched them with envious eyes, wishing we too had wings like a leucosticte, not that we "might fly away," as the Psalmist longed to do, but that we might scale the mountains at our own sweet will. The favorite occupation of our little comrades, besides flying, was hopping about on the snow and picking up dainties that were evidently palatable. Afterwards we examined the snow, and found several kinds of small beetles and other insects creeping up through it or about on its surface. Without doubt these were leucosticte's choice morsels. Thus Nature spreads her table everywhere with loving care for her feathered children. The general habits of the rosy finches are elsewhere depicted in this volume. It only remains to be said that they were much more abundant and familiar on Gray's Peak than on Pike's Peak,—that is, at the time of my respective visits to those summits.
