86 STALKS ABROAD 



and little white flecks began to fall, at first gently 

 and silently as though they loved the errand upon 

 which they came, but later hard and fast with a 

 kind of fierce blinding insistence which hid every- 

 thing from view. Out of the grey nothingness 

 beyond the deadened pines, came that terrible 

 ceaseless stream of floating flakes. They drifted 

 away among the yet uncovered patches of rock 

 and shrouded the mantled ground in an even deeper 

 pall of white. From the ridge-tops the wind, 

 boisterous and not to be denied, whirled wisps of 

 snow, weaving them into fantastic shapes as of 

 dead Indian hunters and the beasts which they 

 pursued. In among the deadened pines vanished 

 these strange phantoms, the creatures of a breath, 

 whilst their creator roared and blustered down the 

 rocky gorges with an angry moan. Behind the 

 great grey mass from which the spur thrust itself, 

 the narrow gulch rose steeply on either hand. 

 Rocky buttresses thrust their battlemented tops 

 above its sides and over the straggling firs which 

 clung so desperately about them ; enormous boulders 

 filled its bed ; whilst here and there vast colour- 

 less slides, hundreds of yards across and a mile or 

 more in length, drove steeply down between its 

 frowning walls. It was a scene of desolate loneliness 

 which would have been hard to equal. 



So indeed I thought as I stood shivering in a 

 narrow ledge, a precipice on one side and a tower- 

 ing wall of smooth rock on the other. A line of 



