Our horses had to be fed, ourselves to be housed.
We had not time to continue on down the other side
whither the trail led. At the very and literal brink
of achievement we were forced to turn back.

Gradually the idea possessed us. We promised
ourselves that some day we would explore. In our
after-dinner smokes we spoke of it. Occasionally,
from some hunter or forest-ranger, we gained little
items of information, we learned the fascination of
musical names--Mono Canon, Patrera Don Victor,
Lloma Paloma, Patrera Madulce, Cuyamas, became
familiar to us as syllables. We desired mightily to
body them forth to ourselves as facts. The extent
of our mental vision expanded. We heard of other
mountains far beyond these farthest--mountains
whose almost unexplored vastnesses contained great
forests, mighty valleys, strong water-courses, beautiful
hanging-meadows, deep canons of granite, eternal
snows,--mountains so extended, so wonderful, that
their secrets offered whole summers of solitary
exploration. We came to feel their marvel, we came
to respect the inferno of the Desert that hemmed
them in. Shortly we graduated from the indefiniteness
of railroad maps to the intricacies of geological
survey charts. The fever was on us. We must go.

A dozen of us desired. Three of us went; and
of the manner of our going, and what you must
know who would do likewise, I shall try here to