the solid rock. This channel to-day is Yosemite Valley. But to return to
the Half Dome. On its northeastern side, by circuitous trails and stiff
climbing, one may gain the Saddle. Against the slope of the Dome the
Saddle leans like a gigantic slab, and from the top of this slab, one
thousand feet in length, curves the great circle to the summit of the
Dome. A few degrees too steep for unaided climbing, these one thousand
feet defied for years the adventurous spirits who fixed yearning eyes
upon the crest above.

One day, a couple of clear-headed mountaineers had proceeded to insert
iron eye-bolts into holes which they drilled into the rock every few
feet apart. But when they found themselves three hundred feet above the
Saddle, clinging like flies to the precarious wall with on either hand a
yawning abyss, their nerves failed them and they abandoned the
enterprise. So it remained for an indomitable Scotchman, one George
Anderson, finally to achieve the feat. Beginning where they had left
off, drilling and climbing for a week, he had at last set foot upon that
awful summit and gazed down into the depths where Mirror Lake reposed,
nearly a mile beneath.

In the years which followed, many bold men took advantage of the huge
rope ladder which he had put in place; but one winter ladder, cables and
all were carried away by the snow and ice. True, most of the eye-bolts,
twisted and bent, remained. But few men had since essayed the hazardous
undertaking, and of those few more than one gave up his life on the
treacherous heights, and not one succeeded.

But Gus Lafee and Hazard Van Dorn had left the smiling valley-land of
California and journeyed into the high Sierras, intent on the great
adventure. And thus it was that their disappointment was deep and