A messenger is peeping,
There where you’re sleeping:
For the day’s been begun
By your master the sun,
And you surely will follow.
CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE
XIII. CLIMBING RED EAGLE
We journeyed through the primeval forest without a trail to guide us, through the jagged, thorny, tumultuous pine wilderness. It was not so easy for Lindsay, whose legs are shorter than mine, but he took it as a game of banter leader and moved forward doggedly into the openings I made. We were glad to take advantage of the thousands of wind-smitten trees which lay dead, piled at every angle and piled on one another.
We climbed upward for miles on the white, smooth, dead timber of fallen trees, balancing and jumping, transferring from trunk to trunk, and clambering over the immense stars of upturned roots. We were rewarded at length by a view of the rocks above the tree line and of a tumbling cascade. This was in the direction we required and we made for it and lunched by the cascade become rivulet, and then climbed all the afternoon by rock stairs to the snow.