Beyond the West: containing an account of two years' travel in the other half of our great continent far beyond the old West, on the plains, in the Rocky mountains, and picturesque parks of Colorado. Also, characteristic features of New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho ... Oregon, Utah, Nevada, and ... California, the end of the West ... the great continental railroad, together with the ... most wonderful natural scenery in the world .../ by George W. Pine.

ASCENT OF PIKERS PEAK.I
the rarity of the atmosphere did not retard us, but
we found climbing down quite as exhausting as
climbing up, and a raspberry diet is not invigorating.
At five o'clock we reached the last night's camp,
glad to break our twelve hours' fast with ample cups
of tea and homeopathic fragments of bread and meat.
After a brief halt we hastened on down the ledges
and over tree-trunks.
When we sat upon a log for a little rest, one of the
ladies appeared utterly exhausted. We asked if we
should not camp until morning that she might recruit? She could not articulate a single word, but
shook her head with indignant vigor. Again pressing on, an hour later we kindled a fire, went to bed,
or rather to blankets, and we were instantly asleep.
On the fifth morning when we awoke, only that
expressive colloquialism which the fire companies
have added to the vernacular could describe our
condition; we were "played out." We swallowed
our last provisions, a morsel of mneat and a tablespoonful of crumbs each. The unfailing tea measurably restored us, but in our exigency we would
gladly have exchanged it for the cup which cheers
and does not intoxicate.
We descended by a new routte over hill sides,
crossed and recrossed by tracts of grizzly bears, and
through canyons surprising us constantly with a
73