i 4 IBEX SHOOTING 



less dangerous, part of the valley, where 

 we could rest a while, and breathe again 

 without fear of avalanches. 



Avalanches ! why my idea of an ava- 

 lanche had been a certain amount of soft 

 snow rumbling down a hill in a cloud of 

 snow-dust ; not what I had just seen, 

 namely, the whole side of a hill suddenly 

 coming away with a roar like thunder, at 

 the pace of an express train, the mass 

 tearing away everything that came in its 

 way. What were rocks and trees to a 

 thing like that? Just dust before the 

 broom ! This huge, irresistible mass would 

 come down perhaps 3,000 feet and foam 

 into the lowest valley, leaving there a huge 

 heap of debris a quarter of a mile long, 

 and filling up the valley to a height of 

 perhaps forty feet ; a heap of snow, rocks, 

 trees, huge blocks of frozen snow, and 

 snowballs as big as a small house ; the 

 wind of the avalanche meantime would set 

 off perhaps twenty more on a smaller scale 

 on both sides of its course. 



