Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: fore the "rosy-fingered daughter of the dawn" had brushed away the ocean mists, our feet were planted on the trail and the great feat of pedestrianism fairly inaugurated. The turn-out, which brought us to the foot of the mountains, returned to the nearest hostelry while its freight of human souls went marching on up the steeps. In order that the magnitude of this undertaking may be more full appreciated, it should be explained that Mount Wilson is seven thousand feet high and its summit only accessible by means of a narrow footpath between seven and eight miles long. The ascent in many places is very precipitous, and here and there the tourist passes along the edge of precipices from five hundred to perhaps one thousand feet deep. Very few people have the courage to undertake the journey and still fewer ever succeed in reaching the summit. With walking sticks in hand we started out at the moderate pace of about one and a quarter miles per hour to make the venturesome jaunt—-flagon and snack being strapped to the back of our high-born guide. At this juncture the writer's mission also became apparent. The lordly English gent committed his wife to my care and guidance, and pushed on without ceremony toward the summit. Of course I could not enter protest against this procedure. In fact I had no time. The shuffle was made so adroitly and with so little formality that I did not fairly wake up to the situation until my friend (?) was out of sight and then it was too late. I concluded, therefore, to accept the inevitable as gracefully as I had accepted the optional in joining the party, and be as gallant and good-natured as though I had not the thought of being made a victim to drudgery. But as we moved on at a moderate gait, slowly surmounting the " rocky steep," I chafed to pus...