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 



