TIMBER-LINE AND SUMMIT 143 



goats killed on Phillips Peak, and finding no bear-signs 

 about them, we swung off on our long mountain-side 

 tramp. 



By that time, the day had grown stormy. The west 

 wind had borne up a mass of leaden clouds that com- 

 pletely obscured the sun; but fortunately they flew well 

 above us. It was evident that snow was on the wings 

 of the wind. Whenever we crossed a wedge of green 

 timber we went at a swift pace, but at every basin, and 

 every open pathway of an avalanche, we hunted very 

 cautiously. 



Before our progress, that mountain-side unrolled like 

 a panorama, in an endless chain of timbered ridges, hol- 

 low basins, steep slopes, ridges of slide-rock, and frown- 

 ing cliffs looming up into the flying clouds. 



Once we passed a very curious feature. From the 

 side of a cliff, half way from basin-bottom to summit, 

 there came out a huge mass of slide-rock that looked like 

 an enormous dump from a mountain mine. The level 

 top ran back to the face of the rock wall, and it looked 

 as if cars had run out of the bowels of the mountain, and 

 dumped there ten million tons of broken limestone, in 

 slide-rock sizes. The resemblance was perfect, and I 

 told Charlie to enter the name of that feature as " The 

 Dump." 



That was an awe-inspiring scramble. 



Even a sensible dog would have been impressed by 

 the majesty of the rugged rock walls towering heaven- 

 ward; the rugged terrors of the acres and acres of cruel 

 slide-rock; the weird, squawking cries of the Clark's 



