The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1910-05-13

Initiate Billy and invest 20
cents in a pair of canvas leg
gings; but you need only some
old togs. Stay prinked up in your best
bib and tucker, If you want to, until
you reach the inner end of the Big
Thompson canyon, until you have ia
ken that thirty-mile ride over road
bitten and blasted out of great ridge
OF rebellious rock; but, once you and
your bag have been deposited at
Stead's or at the Elkhorn, If you want
to be at ease, if you want to be la
mode, lose no time in getting into your
gray flannel shirt, your old freshman
corduroys, and that pair of tanned
shoes that you were ashamed to give
to the Salvation Army. You are now,
If never before, in the land of the free
and the home of the brave.
Honeymoons ought to be had in sec
lions. A man can seldom afford, i'm
mediately after his wedding, to go as
far and stay as long as his generous
heart would prompt-aluminum ket-
ties, box springs and rag carpets eff
fectively limit the daring of the most
optimistic of bridegrooms. And some
section of that honeymoon, five, ten,
twenty years after the green flag Of
section one has passed, ought to be
spent In the Rocky mountains in Col
orado, says writer in Illustrated Buff
falo Express.
Almost Immediately you want to
tackle Longs peak, but you would
better wait little, for. though it Is
no Mount Mckinley, although you are
already some 5000 feet up in the air,
yet you cannot drop a nickel in the
slot and reach the summit as on Pixies
peak. Sooner or later, though, you will
face the task you have set yourself
Maybe you will spend the night at
Longs peak inn, or perhaps at the
Timber-line cabin, or perhaps you will
start early enough to make the whole
round trip in day. However you
make it, under whatever conditions of
weather. you will have your reward.
Up you climb through the cool, dark
forests of pine and silver spruce; up
till the wind-swept trees of timber-line
little, 100-year-old, stunted, distorted,
stripped, sprawly things-tell you that
the sea level is over IL 900 feet below;
up, now over a trail so exposed to the
merciless attack of an unobstructed
wind that horse and rider have to fight
to hold their equilibrium; up over the
boulder field, that tumbled, piled mass
of immense rocks that is our unfin-
ished equivalent of the Giants Cause
way, unfinished, l say, for there's no
such shaping and setting as was done
by the giant sons of Erin. Over such
precarious trail it is impossible to
take horses; so you loose the cinches.
hitch to boulder and start afoot. Still
up you go through the Keyhole and
round the Shelf; at last there is the
Trough, and the Narrows and the
Home-stretch. To the unaccustomc
easterner these last really seem like
climbing. At every few steps he
stops and gasps for breath, but each
halt gives him some sense of accom-
plishment; below him straight slide
of 1000 feet or so, above him a per-
pendicular climb of another 1000 feet,
with only cracks for footholds, all
around, as far as eye can reach, tier
upon tier of the white-capped noun
tains, and in minute or so his breath
is so far regained and his ambition so
far restirred, that he is fit for another
ten feet.
Although the records state that al
the Keyhole on September %, 1884
Miss Carrie j. Welton, on her return
from the summit, persisted from over
exertion and exposure; although you
know many strong man to whom the
farther side of the boulder-field said
THUS far shalt thou come and nc
farther" whose advance was effective
ly forbid by headache, nosebleed, nau
sea or the worst forms Of dysentery;
vet there is no real danger at any
point. Indeed. when you stand 14,255
feet up in the air on that bald. bro
ken, impressive. stone tower" your
pride is likely to be pricked by the an