Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/673

Rh fire and shelter, and above all we must have dry air to get clear skies. First I thought of the Peak of Teneriffe, but afterward some point in the Territories of the United States seemed preferable, particularly as the Government offered to give the expedition, through the Signal Service, and under the direction of its head, General Hazen, material help in transportation and a military escort, if needed, anywhere in its own dominions. No summit in the eastern part of the United States rises much over seven thousand feet; and, though the great Rocky Mountains reach double this, their tops are the home of fog and mist, so that the desired conditions, if met at all, could only be found on the other side of the continent in Southern California, where the summits of the Sierra Nevadas rise precipitously out of the dry air of the great wastes in lonely peaks, which look eastward down from a height of nearly fifteen thousand feet upon the desert lands.

This remote region was, at the time I speak of, almost unexplored, and its highest peak, Mount Whitney, had been but once or twice ascended, but was represented to be all we desired could we once climb it. As there was great doubt whether our apparatus, weighing several thousand pounds, could possibly be taken to the top, and we had to travel three thousand miles even to get where the chief difficulties would begin and make a desert journey of one hundred and fifty miles after leaving the cars, it may be asked why we committed ourselves to such an immense journey to face such unknown risks of failure. The answer must be that mountains of easy ascent and fifteen thousand feet high are not to be found at our doors, and that these risks were involved in the nature of our novel experiment, so that we started out from no love of mere adventure, but from necessity, much into the unknown. The liberality of a citizen of Pittsburg, to whose encouragement the enterprise was due, had furnished the costly and delicate apparatus for the expedition, and that of the transcontinental railroads enabled us to take this precious freight along in a private car, which carried a kitchen, a steward, a cook, and an ample larder besides.

In this we crossed the entire continent from ocean to ocean, stopped at San Francisco for the military escort, went three hundred miles south so as to get below the mountains, and then turned eastward again on to the desert, with the Sierras to the north of us, after a journey which would have been unalloyed pleasure except for the anticipation of what was coming as soon as we left our car. I do not indeed know that one feels the triumphs of civilization over the opposing forces of Nature anywhere more than by the sharp contrasts which the marvelous luxury of recent railroad accommodation gives to the life of the desert. When one is in the center of one of the great barren regions of the globe, and, after looking out from the windows of the flying train on its scorched wastes for lonely leagues of habitless desolation, turns to his well-furnished dinner-table, and the fruit and ices of his