mountains, snow, pinnacles, another world

"At the top we paused insensibly, and all gathered there, first to behold and gaze excitedly at the glittering summits of the Rocky Mountains. Their sharp pyramids of snow seemed to penetrate,—or all sun-lit—were sublimely relieved by the dark clouds. We descended to find a level camp ground on the Sweet Water; and the telescope now reveals faintly many more pinnacles penetrating dim, airy space, beyond the eye's power to catch the bright reflections of their snow mantles. Like phantoms they seem, mysteriously shadowing forth an unknown land,—a new world."
"Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852): 507; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 * * *

On our starboard beam, like a pile of glaciers in Switzerland, lay this Staten Land, gleaming in snow-white barrenness and solitude. Unnumbered white albatross were skimming the sea near by, and clouds of smaller white wings fell through the air like snow-flakes. High, towering in their own turbaned snows, the far-inland pinnacles loomed up, like the border of some other world. 
White-Jacket (1850), chapter 28