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These Negritos axe splendid climbers, but it seemed wonderful for even a Negrito to trust himself on one of these bamboos stretching like a thread from tree to tree so far from the ground.
About a mile below the falls he met two men. One of them was Colby Macdonald. He carried a coil of rope over one shoulder. The big Alaskan explained that he had not been able to get it out of his head that perhaps the climbers who had waved at his party had been in difficulties. So he had got a rope from the cabin of an old miner and was on his way back to the falls.
Bears and wolves were closing in from all directions, and now from the sky the Thunder gave his fearful war-whoop, answered by the wolf's long howl. The badgers and other burrowers began at once to undermine his rocky fortress, while the climbers undertook to scale its perpendicular walls.
The rocks towered above them and were extremely craggy, but of a columnar, basaltic nature, which formed plenty of steps for the climbers, who mounted some fifty feet and then were able to look down into a perfectly-formed semicircular bay, the spit on which they stood forming one side, a similar spit being on the other about a hundred and fifty yards away, while the whole wore the aspect of a volcanic crater, one side of which had been washed down by the sea, the black jagged rock and barren aspect being suggestive of this having been once the scene of an eruption.
The climbers wore ice-shoes with leather suckers on the soles, such as the feet of flies are furnished with, so that it was almost impossible for them to slip; and when they came to a sloping surface, where it was too steep for them to climb, they made use of a motor sledge furnished with a wheel different from the others.
At first she had supposed him to be one of the walking tourists or climbers who usually invaded the valleys at Easter; but they were, for the most part, young men from the cities, and this stranger's face was darkened by the sun. There was also an indefinite suggestion of strength in the poise of his lean, symmetrical figure, which could only have come from strenuous labor in the open air.
As a boy guide I trailed far into the wilds with hunting parties, and camped through the summers with fishermen, geologists, explorers and mountain climbers. The reaction of individuals to the open spaces has ever been interesting to me. I have seen voluble women silent before the awesome beauty. I have seen phlegmatic business men moved to tears.
With leaf- climbers, as we shall soon see, analogous cases frequently occur; but these present no difficulty, as the stem is secured by the clasping petioles. In the many other revolving and twining plants observed by me, I never but twice saw the movement reversed; once, and only for a short space, in Ipomoea jucunda; but frequently with Hibbertia dentata.
These thickets are formed chiefly of bamboos, whose slender foliage and curving stems arrange themselves in elegant, feathery bowers; but other social plants slender green climbers with tendrils so eager in aspiring to grasp the higher boughs that they seem to be endowed almost with animal energy, and certain low trees having large elegantly-veined leaves contribute also to the jungly masses.
“A capital idea, Stephen. At any rate, it would be worth trying.” “I will go and fetch some of those climbers, sir, and some long thorns to make the holes with.” “We may as well all go, Stephen; we have nothing to do here, and at any rate it is cooler in the forest than it is on the sands. We shall want a good stock of thorns, for we are sure to break lots of them in making the holes.”
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