It was only a stupendous upheaval of earth-crust, grown over at the base by leagues and leagues of pine forest, belted along the middle by vast slanting zigzag slopes of aspen, rent and riven toward the heights into canyon and gorge, bared above to cliffs and corners of craggy rock, whitened at the sky-piercing peaks by snow.

Its beauty and sublimity were lost upon Carley now; she was concerned with its travail, its age, its endurance, its strength.

And she studied it with magnified sight.
What incomprehensible subterranean force had swelled those immense slopes and lifted the huge bulk aloft to the clouds?
Cataclysm of nature--the expanding or shrinking of the earth--vast volcanic action under the surface! Whatever it had been, it had left its expression of the travail of the universe.

This mountain mass had been hot gas when flung from the parent sun, and now it was solid granite.

What had it endured in the making?
What indeed had been its dimensions before the millions of years of its struggle?
Eruption, earthquake, avalanche, the attrition of glacier, the erosion of water, the cracking of frost, the weathering of rain and wind and snow--these it had eternally fought and resisted in vain, yet still it stood magnificent, frowning, battle-scarred and undefeated.