The Mountain that was God | Page 6

wall Is piled to heaven, and through the narrow rift Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar: Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind Comes burdened with the everlasting moan Of forests and far-off waterfalls."--Whittier.]
Yonder, in the southeast, towering above the lower shadows of harbor and hills, rose a vast pyramid of soft flame. The setting sun had thrown a mantle of rose pink over the ice of the glaciers and the great cleavers of rock which buttress the mighty dome. The rounded summit was warm with beautiful orange light. Soon the colors upon its slope changed to deeper reds, and then to amethyst, and {p.023} violet, and pearl gray. The sun-forsaken ranges below fell away to dark neutral tints. But the fires upon the crest burned on, deepening from gold to burnished copper, a colossal beacon flaming high against the sunset purple of the eastern skies. Finally, even this great light paled to a ghostly white, as the supporting foundation of mountain ridges dropped into the darkness of the long northern twilight, until the snowy summit seemed no longer a part of earth, but a veil of uncanny mist, caught up by the winds from the Pacific and floating far above the black sky-line of the solid Cascades, that
*?*?*?heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared Between the East and West.
[Illustration {p.022}: Copyright, 1900, By A. H. Waite. North Peak, or Liberty Cap, and South Mowich Glacier in storm, seen from an altitude of 6,000 feet, on ridge between South Mowich and Puyallup Glaciers. The glacier, 2,000 feet below, is nearly half a mile wide. Note the tremendous wall of ice in which it ends.]
[Illustration: Copyright, 1900, By A. H. Waite. Basaltic Columns, part of the "Colonnade" on south side of South Mowich Glacier. These curious six-sided columns of volcanic rock are similar to those bordering the Cowlitz Glacier.]
[Illustration: Mountain Goat, an accidental snap-shot of the fleet and wary Mazama; godfather of the famous Portland mountain club.]
And when even that apparition had faded, and the Mountain appeared only as an uncertain bulk shadowed upon the night, then came the miracle. Gradually, the east, beyond the great hills, showed a faint silver glow. Silhouetted against this dim background, the profile of the peak grew definite. With no other warning, suddenly from its summit the full moon shot forth, huge, majestic and gracious, flooding the lower world with brightness. Clouds and mountain ranges alike shone with its glory. But the great peak loomed blacker and more sullen. Only, on its head, the wide crown of snow gleamed white under the cold rays of the moon.
[Illustration {p.024}: West Side of the summit, seen from Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually, on road to Longmire Springs. Note the whiteness of the glacial water. This stream is fed by the united Tahoma glaciers. See pp. 32 and 37.]
{p.025} [Illustration: Iron and Copper Mountains (right) in Indian Henry's. The top of Pyramid Peak shows in the saddle beyond with Peak Success towering far above.]
No wonder that this mountain of changing moods, overtopping every other eminence in the Northwest, answered the idea of God to the simple, imaginative mind of the Indians who hunted in the forest on its slopes or fished in the waters of Whulge that ebbed and flowed at its base. Primitive peoples in every land have deified superlative manifestations of nature--the sun, the wind, great rivers, and waterfalls, the high mountains. By all the tribes within sight of its summit, this pre-eminent peak, variously called by them Tacoma (Tach-ho��ma), Tahoma or Tacob, as who should say "The Great Snow," was deemed a power to be feared and conciliated. Even when the missionaries taught them a better faith, they continued to hold the Mountain in superstitious reverence--an awe that still has power to silence their "civilized" and very unromantic descendants.
[Illustration: Cutting steps up Paradise Glacier.]
The Puget Sound tribes, with the Yakimas, Klickitats and others living just beyond the Cascades, had substantially the same language and beliefs, though differing much in physical and mental type. {p.026} East of the range, they lived by the chase. They were great horsemen and famous runners, a breed of lithe, upstanding, competent men, as keen of wit as they were stately in appearance. These were "the noble Red Men" of tradition. Fennimore Cooper might have found many a hero worthy of his pen among the savages inhabiting the fertile valley of the Columbia, which we now call the Inland Empire. But here on the Coast were the "Digger" tribes, who subsisted chiefly by spearing salmon and digging clams. Their stooped figures, flat faces, downcast eyes and low mentality reflected the life they led. Contrasting their heavy bodies with their feeble legs, which grew shorter with disuse, a Tacoma humorist last summer gravely proved to a