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Hans, however, did not think it prudent to pass the night on the bare
side of the cone. We therefore continued our journey in a zigzag
direction. The fifteen hundred feet which remained to be accomplished
took us at least five hours. The turnings and windings, the
no-thoroughfares, the marches and marches, turned that insignificant
distance into at least three leagues. I never felt such misery, fatigue
and exhaustion in my life. I was ready to faint from hunger and cold.
The rarefied air at the same time painfully acted upon my lungs.
At last, when I thought myself at my last gasp, about eleven at night,
it being in that region quite dark, we reached the summit of Mount
Sneffels! It was in an awful mood of mind, that despite my fatigue,
before I descended into the crater which was to shelter us for the
night, I paused to behold the sun rise at midnight on the very day of
its lowest declension, and enjoyed the spectacle of its ghastly pale
rays cast upon the isle which lay sleeping at our feet!
I no longer wondered at people traveling all the way from England to
Norway to behold this magical and wondrous spectacle.
CHAPTER 13
THE SHADOW OF SCARTARIS
Our supper was eaten with ease and rapidity, after which everybody did
the best he could for himself within the hollow of the crater. The bed
was hard, the shelter unsatisfactory, the situation painful--lying in
the open air, five thousand feet above the level of the sea!
Nevertheless, it has seldom happened to me to sleep so well as I did on
that particular night. I did not even dream. So much for the effects of
what my uncle called "wholesome fatigue."
Next day, when we awoke under the rays of a bright and glorious sun, we
were nearly frozen by the keen air. I left my granite couch and made one
of the party to enjoy a view of the magnificent spectacle which
developed itself, panorama-like, at our feet.
I stood upon the lofty summit of Mount Sneffels' southern peak. Thence I
was able to obtain a view of the greater part of the island. The optical
delusion, common to all lofty heights, raised the shores of the island,
while the central portions appeared depressed. It was by no means too
great a flight of fancy to believe that a giant picture was stretched
out before me. I could see the deep valleys that crossed each other in
every direction. I could see precipices looking like sides of wells,
lakes that seemed to be changed into ponds, ponds that looked like
puddles, and rivers that were transformed into petty brooks. To my right
were glaciers upon glaciers, and multiplied peaks, topped with light
clouds of smoke.
The undulation of these infinite numbers of mountains, whose snowy
summits make them look as if covered by foam, recalled to my remembrance
the surface of a storm-beaten ocean. If I looked towards the west, the
ocean lay before me in all its majestic grandeur, a continuation as it
were, of these fleecy hilltops.
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