Each time we attained
the summit of a mountain, we hoped we should be able to see something
like a valley, but each time came disappointment, for far ahead was
always another and higher mountain. We found some springs, or, as we
called them, wells, from five to twenty feet under ground, as you might
say, for they were under the snow on which we walked. The water was so
warm that it melted the snow, and from some of these springs were large
streams of running water. We crossed numbers of these streams on bridges
of snow, which would sometimes form upon a blade of grass hanging over
the water; and from so small a foundation would grow a bridge from ten
to twenty-five feet high, and from a foot and a half to three feet
across the top. It would make you dizzy to look down at the water, and
it was with much difficulty we could place our clumsy ox-bow snow-shoes
one ahead of the other without falling. Our feet had been frozen and
thawed so many times that they were bleeding and sore. When we stopped
at night we would take off our shoes, which by this time were so badly
rotted by constant wetting in snow, that there was very little left of
them. In the morning we would push our shoes on, bruising and numbing
the feet so badly that they would ache and ache with walking and the
cold, until night would come again.
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