2-752-493 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Gray's Peak', 1874. View of Grays Peak, the tenth-highest summit of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, USA. 'Foremost in the view are the twin peaks, Gray's and Torrey's; but, in a vast area that seems limitless, there are successive rows of pinnacles, some of them entirely wrapped in everlasting snow, others patched with it, some abrupt and pointed, others reaching their climax by soft curves and gradations that are almost imperceptible. We are on the crest of a continent...There is a sort of enclosure some feet beneath the very summit of Gray's Peak...a valley surrounded by walls of snow, dotted by occasional bowlders, and sparsely covered with dwarfed vegetation. Here we encamp and light our fires, and smoke our pipes, while our minds are in a trance over the superb reach before us'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. II, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1874]