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isolation of our position, two persons who had never been out of a large city before now sleeping on the summit of and amid the eternal snows of the Rocky Mountains. Near morning I got a short doze I woke up at daylight shining and benumbed from the cold I felt an on my body and on pushing the blanket from my heat I perceived that we had a heavy fall of snow during the night Things looked wretched un the extreme our fire was intirely extinguished the wretched mule stood nearly covered with a white blanket of snow so weak and exhausted by hunger and cold that he was not able to shake the snow from his back. I aroused my comrade and we set out on a cruise to look for some dry wood fortunately we found some close by and in a few minutes we had a rousing fire I enjoyed it hugely I was nearly perished even the poor mule came alongside and warmed one side and then turned round the other he seemed to enjoy it as much as we did. We prepared some breakfast and by sunrise were once more ascending towards that far off lofty peak the trail was intirely obliterated by the snow that had fallen during the night we now had to guide our course by a pocket compass it now became awful hard to go ahead sometimes we would get into drifts over our arm pits there was also great danger of walking over some concealed precipice and being dashed to pieces the mule showed signs of giving out and I thought we must have the poor thing to perish on the mountains. We sat down nearly in despair at the cheereless looking prospect when we heard some merry voices ahead and seemingly coming towards us in a few minutes they reached us and I found among them some friends who had travelled with us on the road they told us it was impossible to bring our mule any farther and they offered to take him back to our camp we accepted their offer thankfully