Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/323

Rh. By keeping along a ridge we find it comparatively easy to clamber up. Two of our party, however, decide to attempt a more abrupt ascent.

As we course along our rocky ridge we watch the adventurers on the snow-field. After climbing over a sharp slope of broken rock, they come upon an incline of nearly eighty degrees—in fact, the snow-field appears concave to us—and commence crawling up it. By great exertions, and cutting steps in the snow with their hunting-knives, they reach the edge of the first crevasse, where we see them pause, holding on to the edge, and looking into it. They can proceed no farther. The crevasse is fifteen feet across, and hundreds deep. Could they throw themselves over, they must inevitably slide back into it, from the glassy surface above.

Starting cautiously to return, and holding back by striking their heels in the snow, making but slight impressions, first one, then the other, loses his hold, and down they go—swiftly, swiftly, ever more swiftly—darting like arrows from their bows, straight down the steep incline, toward the rocks below the snow-line. The younger and more active contrives to draw his hunting-knife from its scabbard, and, by striking it into the hard snow, to check his speed. What a grip he has! We laugh, while we are trembling with excitement, to see him swing quite round the knife-hilt, like a plummet at the end of a string swung in the fingers. He has arrested his descent in time to avoid the rocks.

Not so his clumsier companion, who comes down, luckily, heels foremost, among the rocky debris at the bottom. His bruises, though many, are not dangerous; and this little experience teaches our young