Page:Alaska days with John Muir.djvu/19

Rh peculiar meaning as he glanced quickly at me across the table. He knew the leading strings I was in; how those well-meaning D.D.s and their motherly wives thought they had a special mission to suppress all my self-destructive proclivities toward dangerous adventure, and especially to protect me from "that wild Muir" and his hare-brained schemes of mountain climbing. "Where is it?" I asked, as we met behind the pilot house a moment later. He pointed to a little group of jagged peaks rising right up from where we stood—a pulpit in the center of a vast rotunda of magnificent mountains. "One of the finest viewpoints in the world," he said. "How far to the highest point?"

"About ten miles."

"How high?" "Seven or eight thousand feet."