We waited two hours without change, except an occasional hopeful lightness in the fog above, and at last the appearance for a moment of the spectral sun.Only for an instant was this luminous promise vouchsafed.But we watched in intense excitement.There it was again; and this time the fog was so thin overhead that we caught sight of a patch of blue sky a yard square, across which the curtain was instantly drawn.A little wind was stirring, and the fog boiled up from the valley caldrons thicker than ever.But the spell was broken.In a moment more Old Phelps was shouting, "The sun!" and before we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky overhead as big as a farm."See! quick!" The old man was dancing like a lunatic.There was a rift in the vapor at our feet, down, down, three thousand feet into the forest abyss, and lo! lifting out of it yonder the tawny side of Dix,--the vision of a second, snatched away in the rolling fog.The play had just begun.Before we could turn, there was the gorge of Caribou Pass, savage and dark, visible to the bottom.The opening shut as suddenly; and then, looking over the clouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms of the Au Sable Valley, and in a moment more the plateau of North Elba and the sentinel mountains about the grave of John Brown.These glimpses were as fleeting as thought, and instantly we were again isolated in the sea of mist.The expectation of these sudden strokes of sublimity kept us exultingly on the alert; and yet it was a blow of surprise when the curtain was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and the long ridge of Colvin, seemingly within a stone's throw, heaved up like an island out of the ocean, and was the next moment ingulfed.We waited longer for Dix to show its shapely peak and its glistening sides of rock gashed by avalanches.The fantastic clouds, torn and streaming, hurried up from the south in haste as if to a witch's rendezvous, hiding and disclosing the great summit in their flight.The mist boiled up from the valley, whirled over the summit where we stood, and plunged again into the depths.Objects were forming and disappearing, shifting and dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog, and in the elemental whirl we felt that we were "assisting" in an original process of creation.The sun strove, and his very striving called up new vapors; the wind rent away the clouds, and brought new masses to surge about us; and the spectacle to right and left, above and below, changed with incredible swiftness.Such glory of abyss and summit, of color and form and transformation, is seldom granted to mortal eyes.For an hour we watched it until our vast mountain was revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, its abysses and its savagery, and the great basins of wilderness with their shining lakes, and the giant peaks of the region, were one by one disclosed, and hidden and again tranquil in the sunshine.
Where was the cave? There was ample surface in which to look for it.
If we could have flitted about, like the hawks that came circling round, over the steep slopes, the long spurs, the jagged precipices, I have no doubt we should have found it.But moving about on this mountain is not a holiday pastime; and we were chiefly anxious to discover a practicable mode of descent into the great wilderness basin on the south, which we must traverse that afternoon before reaching the hospitable shanty on Mud Pond.It was enough for us to have discovered the general whereabouts of the Spanish Cave, and we left the fixing of its exact position to future explorers.
The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in the distance; but we found it bristling with obstructions, dead balsams set thickly together, slashes of fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos;and when at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge to the general slope, we exchanged only for more disagreeable going.The slope for a couple of thousand feet was steep enough; but it was formed of granite rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could not be determined, and at short intervals we nearly went out of sight in holes under the treacherous carpeting.Add to this that stems of great trees were laid longitudinally and transversely and criss-cross over and among the rocks, and the reader can see that a good deal of work needs to be done to make this a practicable highway for anything but a squirrel....
We had had no water since our daylight breakfast: our lunch on the mountain had been moistened only by the fog.Our thirst began to be that of Tantalus, because we could hear the water running deep down among the rocks, but we could not come at it.The imagination drank the living stream, and we realized anew what delusive food the imagination furnishes in an actual strait.A good deal of the crime of this world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the unlicensed play of the imagination in adverse circumstances.This reflection had nothing to do with our actual situation; for we added to our imagination patience, and to our patience long-suffering, and probably all the Christian virtues would have been developed in us if the descent had been long enough.Before we reached the bottom of Caribou Pass, the water burst out from the rocks in a clear stream that was as cold as ice.Shortly after, we struck the roaring brook that issues from the Pass to the south.It is a stream full of character, not navigable even for trout in the upper part, but a succession of falls, cascades, flumes, and pools that would delight an artist.It is not an easy bed for anything except water to descend; and before we reached the level reaches, where the stream flows with a murmurous noise through open woods, one of our party began to show signs of exhaustion.
