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Updated: May 5, 2025
Everybody knows mountain flowers are beautiful. As one rises up any minor height in the Alps or the Pyrenees below snow-level, one notices at once the extraordinary brilliancy and richness of the blossoms one meets there. All nature is dressed in its brightest robes.
For bees, the common go-betweens of the loves of the plants, cease to range about a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below snow-level. And why? Because it's too cold for them?
The highest mountain-tops are covered with snow, and beneath the snow-level to the sea they are as green as Irish or as English hills, but nearly uninhabited and uncultivated. Valleys of almost Alpine verdure are succeeded by tracts of chestnut wood and scattered pines, or deep and flowery brushwood the 'maquis' of Corsica, which yields shelter to its traditional outlaws and bandits.
Campbell and I made repeated estimates of its height and distance by the eye; comparing its size and snow-level with those of the mountains near us; and assuming 4000 to 5000 feet as the minimum height of its snowy cap; this would give it an elevation of 23,000 to 25,000 feet.
They camped late in a thicket on the shore of South Bay, and at daylight headed straight across the vast snow-level, that stretched for sixty miles in an unbroken surface of white. That night they camped on the ice, and toward noon of the following day drew into the scrub timber directly north of the extremity of Peththenneh Island.
"Inside the hut I found that the floor was of earth and below the snow-level, making evident the fact that it had been erected before the winter had commenced. When I examined the walls, which were constructed of boughs and mud, I came to the conclusion that they had been standing for many years, but had been renewed from time to time.
As far as Palajärvi we ran with our gunwales below the snow-level, while the foremost pulks were frequently swamped under the white waves that broke over them. We passed through a picturesque gorge between two hills about 500 feet high, and beyond it came upon wide lakes covered deep with snow, under which there was a tolerable track, which the leading deer was able to find with his feet.
The moon rose and illumined with soft radiance the indomitable land of the raw. MacNair's gaze roved from the forbidding blackness of the farther shore-line, across the dead, cold snow-level of the ice-locked lake, to the bold headlands that rose sheer upon his right and upon his left. The scene was one of unbending hardness of nature's frowning defiance of man.
"I was afraid they wouldn't take them!" whispered Jim, and his watching face was beautiful, although it was only the face of a little, old man of a little village, with no great gift of intellect. There was a full moon riding high; the ground was covered with a glistening snow-level, over which wavered wonderful shadows, as of wings. One great star prevailed despite the silver might of the moon.
With a cry to his Indians to follow and to bring the Louchoux girl, MacNair threw himself belly-wise onto his sled, gave voice to a weird cry as his dogs shot out across the white snow-level of Snare Lake, and headed south-ward toward the Yellow Knife. He laughed aloud as he glanced over the back-trail and noted that half of his Indians were already following. He had chosen that last cry well.
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