Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/201

Rh 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 exertion, 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, towards 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! I laugh, while I am 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.

Hot so his clumsier companion, who comes down—luckily, heels foremost—among the rocky débris at the bottom. His bruises, though many, are not dangerous; and this little experience teaches our friends the needful prudence. They are content thenceforth to take the longest way round, which is the surest way to the object of their desires. After two or three hours of clambering, we reach the line of perpetual snow.

Just below it is a belt of cedars, with tops so flat that we walk out on them a distance of twenty feet, either side their trunks. Early in their struggle for existence their tops have been broken off by the wind, and the weight of many winters' snows has retarded their upright growth, until the result of a century of aspiration is a ludicrously short stump, and immensely long and broad limbs. In this region we find a few stunted mountain mahogany trees, but are quite above the pines.

Above this, in the snow, or rather in the thin layer of soil deposited in places among the rocks where the sun's action prevents the snow from accumulating, are several varieties of flowering plants with which we are familiar; the blossoms, however,