out a scratch, a heavy spruce pole, a harpoon 

 flung by the slide, struck the cabin at an angle, 

 piercing the roof and one of the walls. 



The prospector was not frightened, but he 

 was mad! Outwitted by a snow-slide! That 

 we were alive was no consolation to him. 

 "Where on earth did the thing come from?" 

 he kept repeating until daylight. Next morn- 

 ing we saw that to the depth of several feet 

 about the cabin and on top of it were snow- 

 masses, mixed with rock-fragments, broken 

 tree-trunks, and huge wood-splinters, — the 

 fragment remains of a snow-slide. 



This slide had started from a high peak-top 

 a mile to the north of the cabin. For three 

 quarters of a mile it had coasted down a slope 

 at the bottom of which a gorge curved away 

 toward the west; but so vast was the quantity 

 of snow that this slide filled and blocked the 

 gorge with less than half of its mass. Over the 

 snowy bridge thus formed, the momentum 

 carried the remainder straight across the gulch. 

 Landing, it swept up a steep slope for three 

 hundred feet and rammed the rocky ridge back 



83 



