Drome/Chapter 11
Chapter 11
The Tamahnowis Rocks
It was very early—in fact, the first rays of the sun, not yet risen, had just touched the lofty heights of Rainier—when Rhodes and I left the Inn.
Besides our revolvers and a goodly supply of ammunition, there were the lights, an aneroid, a thermometer, our canteens, ice-picks; two pieces of light but very strong rope, each seventy-five feet in length; our knives, like those which hunters carry; and food sufficient to last us a week.
Yes, and there were the ice-creepers, which we should need in making our way over the glaciers, the Paradise and the Cowlitz, to that mass of rocks, the scene of those mysterious and terrible tragedies.
We did not take the direct trail up but went over to the edge of the canyon that I—for this was my first visit to Rainier—might see the Nisqually Glacier.
And, as we made dur way upward through the brightening scene, as I gazed upon the grim cosmic beauty all about me, up into the great cirque of the Nisqually, up to the broad summit of the mountain and (in the opposite direction) out over the Tatoosh Range to distant Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens all violet and gold in the morning sun—well, that strange story which had brought us here then took on the seeming of a mirage or a dream.
"The mountain," said Milton Rhodes, as we stood leaning on our alpenstocks during one of our halts, "once rose to a height of 16,000 feet or more. The dip of the lava layers shows that. The whole top was blown clean off."
"Must have been some fireworks then," was my comment.
"See that line of bare rocks on the very summit, Bill, midway between Point Success up here on the left and Gibraltar on the right?"
"I noticed that. Why isn't there any snow there?"
"Heat, Bill," said Rhodes. "Heat."
"Heat! Great Vesuvius, I thought that Rainier was a dead volcano."
"Not dead, Bill. Only slumbering. Four eruptions are on record.[1] Whether Old He is to die in his slumber or whether he is one day to awake in mad fury—that, of course, no man can tell us."
"To see it belching forth smoke and sending down streams of lava would be an interesting sight certainly," said I. "And I wonder what effect that would have on this Drome business—that is, if there is any such thing as Drome at all."
"Drome!" Milton echoed.
For some moments he stood there with a strange look of abstraction upon his face.
"Drome! Ah, Bill," said he, "I wish I knew what it means. But come, we'll never reach the Tamahnowis Rocks if we stand here wondering."
And so we resumed our climb. We were the early birds this morning; not a living soul was to be seen anywhere on the mountain. But hark! What was that? Somebody whistling somewhere up there and off to the right. The whistles came in rapid succession—loud and clear and ringing. I stopped and looked but could see nothing.
I should have explained that we had turned aside from the edge of the canyon, had crossed that little stream mentioned by Grandfather Scranton and had begun to climb that steep rocky mass he spoke of.
"What the deuce," said I, "is that fellow whistling like that for? It can't be to us."
"That," Milton Rhodes smiled, "isn't a man, Bill."
"Not a man!"
"It's a marmot," Milton told me. "A marmot? Well," said I, "we live and we learn. I could have sworn, Milton, that it was a human being."
The ascent was a steep one, and we climbed in silence. The horse-trail, coming from the left, goes slanting and then twisting its way up this' rocky rampart. On reaching the path, we paused for some minutes to get our breath, then plodded on.
"I was thinking," said Milton at last, "of what Parkman said."
"What did he say?"
"'I would go farther for one look into the crater of Vesuvius than to see all the ruined temples in Italy.'"
"I wonder," I returned, "how far we shall have to go to see that angel that says 'Drome,' not to mention her demon."
Rhodes laughed.
"We are getting there, Bill; we're getting there—near the scene of those awful tragedies at any rate."
Ere long we reached the top. Here we passed the last shrub and in a little space came to a small glacier. The tracks of the horses led straight across it. But our route did not go thither; it led up over the rocks.
Suddenly, as we toiled our way upward, Rhodes, with the remark that Science had some strange stories to tell, asked me if I had ever head of Tartaglia's slates. I never had, though I had heard of Tartaglia, and I w'anted to know about those slates.
"Tombstones," said Milton.
"Tombstones?"
"Tombstones, Bill. What with the terrible poverty, Tartaglia, when educating himself, could not get even a slate, and so he went out and wrote his exercises on tombstones."
"Gosh!"
"And did you ever hear of Demoivre's death? There is a problem for your psychological sharks."
"How did the gentleman die?"
"He told them that he had to sleep so many minutes longer each day."
"And did he do it?"
"That's what he did, Bill."
"And," I asked with growing curiosity, "when he had slept through the twenty-four hours? Then what?"
"He never woke up," said Milton Rhodes.
And did I know what the heart of a man does when his head is cut off? I (who was wondering at his sudden turn to these queer scientific matters) said I supposed that the heart stops beating. But Rhodes said no; the organ continues its pulsations for an hour or longer.
And had I heard of Spallanzani's very curious experiment with the crow? I never had, but I wanted to. Spallanzani, Milton told me, gave a crow a good feed and then chopped off its head. (That decapitation didn't surprize me any, for I knew that Spallanzani was a real scientist.) The body was placed in a temperature the same as that of the living bird and kept there for six hours. Spallanzani then took the body out, opened it and found that the food which he had given the bird was thoroughly digested?
"These scientists," was my comment, "are queer birds themselves."
Then he told me some strange things about sympathetic vibrations—that a drinking-glass can be smashed by the human voice (I knew that); that an alpine avalanche can be started thundering down by the tinkle of a bell; and so, as Tyndall tells us, the muleteers in the Swiss mountains silence the bells of their animals when in proximity to such danger. And he told me of that musician who came near destroying the Colebrook Dale suspension bridge with his fiddle![2]
Then came the strangest thing of all—the story of Vogt's cricket. The professor severed the body of a cricket (a living cricket, of course) into two pieces, and the fore part turned round and ate up the hinder!
"Yes," Milton Rhodes said, "Science has some queer stories to tell."
"I should say that she has!" I commented, "And maybe she'll have a stranger one than ever to tell when we get back—that is, if we ever do."
We passed McClure's Rock, height about 7,400 feet; made our way along the head of a small glacier, which fell away toward the Nisqually; ascended the cleaver, at this point very low and along the base of which we had been moving; and there, on the other side and coming up within a few yards of the spot where we stood, was the Paradise Glacier, white and beautiful in the sunlight.
Milton Rhodes gave me an inquiring look.
"Recognize this spot?" he queried. "I never saw it before, but, yes, I believe that I do: this is the place where the angel and the demon crossed over, the spot where Scranton, White and Long found the tracks again."
"This is the place."
"And where," I asked, "are the Tamahnowis Rocks?"
"Can't see them from here, Bill. They're right over there, half a mile distant or so, probably three-quarters."
He moved down to the edge of the snow and ice; I followed.
"Now for the creepers," said Milton, seating himself on a rock fragment. "Then we are off."
A few moments, and we had fastened on the toothed soles of steel and were under way again.
Suddenly Rhodes, who was leading, stopped, raised his alpenstock and pointed with it.
"There they are, Bill!"
And there they were! The Rocks of Tamahnowis—the Demon Rocks—in sight at last!
- ↑ "At this time [November, 1843] two of the great snowy cones, Mount Regnier and St. Helens, were in action. On the 23d of the preceding November, St. Helens had scattered its ashes, like a white fall of snow, over the Dalles of the Columbia, 50 miles distant. A specimen of these ashes was given to me by Mr. Brewer, one of the clergymen at the Dalles,"—Fremont.
- ↑ "When the bridge at Colebrooke Dale (the first iron bridge in the world) was building. a fiddler came along and said to the workmen that he could fiddle their bridge down. The builders thought this boast a fiddle-de-dee, and invited the itinerant musician to fiddle away to his heart's content. One note after another was struck upon the strings until one was found with which the bridge was in sympathy. When the bridge began to shake violently, the incredulous workmen were alarmed at the unexpected result, and ordered the fiddler to stop."—Prof. J. Lovering.