CHAP. VII. 



EFFECTS OF A LAND-SLIDE. 



113 



mountain to a height of 320 feet. The rise is very abrupt, 

 and even difficult in some places ; but when we reached 

 the altitude just named, a wonderful sight burst upon our 

 view. We emerged from a fine forest of spruce and 

 birch, to the border of a complete chaos of rocks and 

 trees. A land-slide, on a stupendous scale, had taken 





],AN'l>-ST,mE ON Cl)l,n-WATr,l; UIVER PORTAGE. 



place during the spring of the preceding year. Above 

 rose a dark-green precipice, several hundred feet high, 

 with trees overhanging its crest ; below, and all the way 

 down a steep incline, were masses of shattered rock, 

 mingled with trunks of trees heaped upon one another in 

 the wildest confusion. At the bottom of this chaotic mass 

 w r as the forest, which had been crushed into the valley 

 below by the falling fragments. It appeared as if a por- 

 tion of the mountain, from 200 to 300 feet in height, and 

 half that measure in breadth, had become detached from 

 VOL. i. I 



