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^[[Holy Cross, 5]]

that has led him on through all these weary days, only to deceive him?

He sits down among the rocks to rest and ponder. Meantime the winds rise and the dull mists are drive along the cliffs and torn to tatters on the sharp projections. To the west great billowy passage-ways are opened, and glimpses of the lofty mountains can be had, looking like ghosts through the thin mists. Suddenly the artist glances upward, and beholds a vision exceeding dramatic and beautiful. He is amazed, he is transfixed. There, set in the dark rock, held high among the floating clouds, he beholds the long-sought cross, perfect, spotless white, grand in dimension, at once the sublimest thing in nature and the emblem of heaven.

He recalls himself, and remembers his ambition, his duty, to transfix, by his art, an image of this vision, that can be carried back to the world. He sets his camera in haste, and invokes the aid of the floating sunlight. He turns for his chemicals, but they are not there. They are far down the mountain on the backs of weary men. In despair he sees the clouds gather and settle down for the night. 

At nearly the same hour our party stood on the summit of the mountain itself and gathered snow from the very top of the holy cross. We, too, saw the clouds break and scatter, and gazed with wonder upon the rolling sea, with its dark mountain islands, and crouched behind the great rocks to avoid the cold winds that battle so incessantly about those high summits.

The utter solitude and desolation of these summit regions are never so deeply impressed upon one as when the rest of the world is shut out thus by clouds, and nothing greets the eye but dull granites and frozen snows.

And, now, since no observations could be made, we decided to descend to timber line, and spend the night.
 
In passing down the rest of the northern spur we stopped near the edge of a great precipice to match the play of the storm-clouds below, and to pitch great rocks into the abyss. While here we were favored by a most unusual phenomenal display. The sun at our backs broke through the clouds, and there was immediately projected on the mists that filled the dark gulf a brilliant rainbow; not the arch, as usually seen, but an entire circle, a spectral ring, which, as we still gazed, faded away, and in a minute was gone. Far beyond, on the opposite side of this deep valley, we could see the ridge occupied