Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/187

 other hides and dress them. They were like boards, especially the buffalo hides. And deer were scarce.

From the high ridge where he and the lieutenant and the doctor stood the view was wide and wonderful, although not cheering. Mountains, mountains, mountains, their sides and tips shining white with snow, their bases, where seen, dark with wooded hills, the pine branches heavily laden by winter.

Far in the east and the southeast the mountains seemed to form a line with every gap stopped.

"Isn't that our Grand Peak, away yonder?" asked the doctor, pointing. "If so, I judge it's a hundred miles, as the bird flies."

"And unreachable from here, except by a bird, sir. We're shut off from it, completely. Besides, our road does not lie in that direction. Our duty as explorers demand that we do not give up so easily." And the lieutenant turned his glasses, so as to sweep the north and the northwest

On the north were lofty hills, pine covered, breaking the nearer view; and snow mountains grouped behind them. The frozen river, marked by willows, stretched onward, in crooked bed, through the valley, now broad, now narrowed, into the northwest, soon to be closed upon by the hills and mountains there.

In all the great expanse nothing moved; even the