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: CHAPTER H. THE INDIAN PASS. The Indian Pass.— The Upper Works. —Iron Ore Beds.— Lake Henderson. — The Blast Furnace. — Lake Sanford. The dawn was sketching faint outlines as I once more opened my eyes. The camp-fire was almost dead. The shanty was breathing out its damp. perfume like a bouquet. The song of the Ausable was loud, and the -wandering bugles of the blue jays were frequent in the thickets. Our frugal breakfast over, in which the mealy peach-blow and the fresh, sweet, crispy trout were conspicuous with the nectarean tea, and we pointed our steps toward the Pass. And now stern work was before us ! Up, up, up we clambered by the. ladder of roots ; up, up, up, by the notches of ledges ; still up, clinging to the crevice, laboring up the detached rock, swung high up by the hemlock's elastic plumage. Breathless, at last, we reach the level ground, and selah ! soaring in stately front magnificent, rises the dizzy cliff. Exultant it hails the morning! But I hardly allow myself a glance, for the prospect from the brow of the grim crag invites me before I study the grand picture from below. So we cross the gorge, including the narrow channel of the Ausable, and address ourselves to scaling the lesser precipice, one thousand feet in air. Child's play proved the late clambering. Up, straight almost as the tamarack's stem, up, up we scrambled. Now we hung by the root, now drew ourselves by the branch to precarious foothold in the fissure. The few. grassy platforms we met, bore aloft tall plumes of pines; and now and then we uncovered, by the tearing up of grass tuft and mossy cushion, the birthplace of the fountain. At last, after a most harassing clamber, we reached a " wind-slash " — a jumble of fallen trees tangling a steep ravine, a perfect ijet of prostrate trunk...