A BREAK -NECK DESCENT. 355 



mossy descent — steep enough, but easy because we knew 

 it — we found ourselves suddenly on the edge of a preci- 

 pice. Below us the descent for full five hundred feet was 

 a vast pile of rocks but a few degrees out from the per- 

 pendicular. It was too late to turn back, for the night 

 was already coming on. We had not fifteen minutes 

 of twilight left. So we commenced the far from facilis 

 descent. It was a break-neck or break-leg operation. 

 Dropping from rock to rock, sliding down sharp inclines, 

 catching here and there at branches of trees or shrubs 

 that gave way with us and let us fall into holes among the 

 stones, out of which we climbed, to fall again and again 

 into similar openings — how we reached the bottom of that 

 descent safely I can not imagine. At the moment we 

 laughed at our scrape and scrapes, but when we reached 

 more sure footing and a less precipitous slope of the 

 mountain we paused for a long breath, and looked into 

 each other's faces before we pushed on in the dense un- 

 der-brush. An occasional look at the compass by the 

 light of a match — for it was now dark — kept us on the 

 right course — east half north — until we heard before us 

 the welcome dash of the Pemigewasset over his rocky 

 bed at the foot of the mountain. The road could not be 

 far beyond it, and crossing the river on a fallen tree, we 

 pressed on, and emerged at last, with no small satisfac- 

 tion, on the track of civilization. 



The silence which filled the valley at the foot of Mount 

 Lafayette as we came into the clearing was oppressive. 

 I never knew the forest so still. No bird, no insect, no 

 living animal uttered a sound. There was no wind to 

 move the trees. The voice of the river was inaudible, 

 for it flows gently by this opening. I sat down by the 

 road-side to gain breath, more exhausted by the descent 



