And what
fine wildness was thus revealed--storms and avalanches, lakes and
waterfalls, gardens and meadows, and interesting animals--only those
will ever know who give the freest and most buoyant portion of their
lives to climbing and seeing for themselves.
To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the
lowlands, these highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly
forbidding--cold, dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and
of all Nature's ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they
are full of the finest and most telling examples of Nature's love; and
though hard to travel, none are safer. For they lead through regions
that lie far above the ordinary haunts of the devil, and of the
pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there are innumerable places
where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from
the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but
what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the
lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even
divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of
civilization.
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