tourists and others. Scores of people, including a few ladies, have climbed the mountain by way of Gibraltar, and returned in safety and without excessive fatigue.

We found friends encamped in Paradise Park, who extended to us a warm welcome. In the evening we gathered around a blazing camp-fire and discussed the pleasures of mountain-climbing, but more especially the many varied charms of Mount Rainier. Several other parties were encamped in the broad, beautiful park, and all the people I met there were enthusiastic over the healthful life they were leading and the marvellous beauties of the scenes about them.

Bidding our kind friends good-by the following morning, we continued our tramp and passed around the east side of Mount Rainier, crossing the Cowlitz and Emmons Glaciers, and on the evening of the second day after leaving Paradise Park, regained our camping-place at The Wedge. Thence we retraced our steps, still visible in the snow, to the main camp. The tramp about the east side of the mountain, although fatiguing and beset with difficulties, was the most instructive and interesting portion of the entire excursion. Later, a visit was made to the west side of the mountain, which included Spray Park, Willis Glacier, Eagle Cliff, and Crater Lake. The most magnificent view that can be had of Mount Rainier is from Eagle Cliff. This in fact is one of the most sublime scenes

presented anywhere in America. From among the firs on the cliff's overhanging ledge the descent of two thousand feet into the canyon is impressive as a view into Yosemite, and beyond this gulf rises the snowy mass of Rainier, a pyramid of flashing ice nine thousand feet high, relieved by the deep-blue lines of the crevasses and the black and red rock-ribs of the volcano. The view is toward the

is worthy of a poet's journey from the farthest Orient.

All who have scaled the icy slopes of the monarch among the mountains of the Far Northwest, breathed the clear air about it, and been lulled to sleep on a couch of fragrant boughs by the music of falling waters, return to the prosaic tasks of every-day life with two wishes firmly rooted in their breasts. These are, that they may be permitted to return to the mountain, and that it may be preserved in all its natural beauty and sublimity as a legacy for generations to Steps have already been taken for reserving Mount Rainier and the rugged country immediately about it as a national park, to be held in trust by the general Government, for the free use of all who may wish to visit it, providing only that they will spare the trees and do no injury to the birds and harmless animals that make their homes among them.

come.

A bill has been presented to Congress in which the boundaries of the proposed Washington National Park are designated. They embrace an area about twenty-five miles square, within which, as I can testify from observation, there are comparatively few trees of value to lumbermen, and such as do occur are in a rugged region and so difficult of access that it will be long before they are of any commercial value. There are no mines, and geologists see no reason for believing that valuable deposits of ore or coal will ever be discovered. The proposed park includes a portion of the extremely rugged crest of the Cascade Mountains, but not Cowlitz Pass, through which it is expected a railroad will soon be built.

There is nothing within the limits of the proposed reservation to excite the greed of man, except the natural beauties of the region. If the gateways to Mount Rainier and the beautiful natural parks on its sides pass into the ownership of individuals or syndicates, toll may be charged for breathing the free air, maintaining health, and cultivating the æsthetic sense that is awakened in every heart by an intimate acquaintance with nature in her finer moods.