At length a blue range, which might be taken for a rising vapour,
appears in the western horizon. It is the first sight the traveller
obtains of the long-looked-for Rocky Mountains; yet he has many a weary
league to pass before he is among them, and dangers not a few before he
can descend their western slopes. At length he finds himself amid
masses of dark brown rocks, not a patch of green appearing; mountain
heights rising westward, one beyond the other; and far-away, where he
might suppose the plains were again to be found, still there rises
before him a region of everlasting snow. For many days he may go on,
now climbing, now descending, now flanking piles of rocks, and yet not
till fully six days are passed is he able to say that he has crossed
that mountain range. Indeed, the term "range" scarcely describes the
system of the Rocky Mountains. It is, in fact, a chain, composed of
numerous links, with vast plains rising amid them.