8o THE ADVENTURES OF A NATURE GUIDE 



a sand blast which bruised my hands and brought 

 blood from my face, and speedily drove me back 

 into the woods. Again I tried. This time I 

 crawled forward between low, heathy growths. At 

 the start these afforded a little protection but as 

 I advanced the wind swept through more swiftly 

 and violently. I was glad to crawl out into the 

 open moorland. Here, after an advance of a few 

 hundred yards, I paused to rest in the lee of a 

 butte of granite. Thicker than hail the sand and 

 gravel rained down upon me; a roll of my coat 

 caught a handful. Much of this consisted of 

 sand-bits the size of a pencil point, but there 

 were a few pieces of gravel the size of hazel 

 nuts; the remainder was rock dust crushed by col- 

 liding with the cliff. 



It was a warm, dry, chinook wind. Its tempera- 

 ture was several degrees above the freezing point. 

 There had been but little snow, and only a few 

 small, icy drifts lay scattered upon the brown, bare 

 moor. The sun shone in a cloudless sky, but the 

 air was so filled with rock dust that objects more 

 than one hundred feet away were out of focus in 

 the hazy yellow air. The effect was that of a des- 

 ert sand storm; the wind, however, was of greater 

 velocity and carried less dust than in desert 

 storms. 



Leaving the shelter of the cliff, I again advanced 

 by crawling. A brief stop was made behind a rock 

 point about five feet high. Here the wind poured 



