178 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



height and here make a home. It was impossible 

 that this barren, blasted pile from the peak could 

 furnish shelter and food enough to keep the fires 

 of any warm-blooded life burning throughout a 

 winter ! This was the ridge-pole of the world. A 

 wilder, barrener, more desolate land of crags and 

 peaks could hardly be found. 



But here it was they told me they had shot 

 the cony, and had seen at least one other besides 

 it. So I sat down to watch, without faith; for if 

 any creature could live here, what possible reason 

 might there be for his electing so to do. 



I was on the roof of creation, looking out and 

 down, the sense of space tingling strangely in my 

 finger-tips, the pull of the swinging world as real 

 in my feet as the thrill of the thin air in my lungs. 

 How such altitudes quicken and exaggerate the 

 senses, the nerves and skin, even one's very hairs ! 

 I could feel the individual hairs on the back of 

 my hands catch and transmit the messages of 

 space, as the wires on the Cape Race Station catch 

 theirs out of the spaces above the sea. As I sat 

 looking out over the wild scene, a great dark 

 hawk wheeled into distant sight toward Eagle 

 Cap Mountain; far below me flapped a band 



