Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/216

210 210 JOURNAL AND LETTERS OF DAVID DOUGLAS. timber gradually becoming smaller, no new plants or ani- mals were added to our store. May 1st, Tuesday. This morning the thermometer stood at 2 below Zero, and the maximum heat at noon was 44 ! We continued ascending, and had the satisfaction at ten to reach the summit, where we made a short pause to rest ourselves, and then descended the eastern side of the Big Hill to a small, round, open piece of ground, through which flowed the smaller or East branch of the river, being the same as we had left yesterday at the west- ern base of the Big Hill. To the right is a small point of low stunted wood of Pinus nigra alba and Banksiana. Near this place we started at mid-day a fine male specimen of Tetra Franklinii, which I preserved with great care. Be- ing well rested by one o'clock, I set out with the view of ascending what seemed to be the highest peak on the North. Its height does not seem to be less than 16,000 or 17,000 feet above the level of the sea. After passing over the lower ridge, I came to about 1,200 feet of by far the most difficult and fatiguing walking I ever experienced, and the utmost care was required to tread safely over the crust of snow. A few mosses and lichens, Andrea? and Jungermannide, are observable, but at the elevation of 4,800 feet vegetation no longer exists; not so much as a lichen is found in a tract of 1,200 feet of eternal ice. The view from the summit is of too awful a cast to afford pleasure. Nothing can be seen, in every direction, as far as the eye can reach except mountains, towering above each other, rugged beyond all description ; while the daz- zling reflection from the snow, the heavenly azure of the solid glaciers with the rainbow tints of their shattered fragments, and the enormous icicles suspended from the perpendicular rocks, and the majestic but terrible ava- lanches hurling themselves from the more exposed south- erly rocks, produced a crash and groaned through the