The pine disappears.

No vegetable form is seen save the mosses and lichens that cling to the rocks, as within the Arctic Circle.
I am on the selvage of the snow--the eternal snow.

I walk upon glaciers, and through their translucent mass I behold the lichens growing beneath.
The scene is bleak and desolate, and I am chilled to the marrow of my bones.
_Excelsior! excelsior_! The highest point is not yet reached.

Through drifts of snow and over fields of ice, up steep ledges, along the slippery escarpment that overhangs the giddy abysm, with wearied knees, and panting breath, and frozen fingers, onward and upward I go.

Ha! I have won the goal.