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The banks were sometimes precipitous, sometimes stony, sometimes grown to the water's edge with thick vegetation. Dick had often to wade, often to climb and scramble, sometimes even to leap from one foothold to another. Only rarely did he enjoy level footing and the opportunity for a straight pull.

This basin was formed by a deep indentation in the land on their starboard hand, the shore of which, starting from the rocky point they had just rounded, rapidly rose almost sheer from the water's-edge to about the same height as the precipitous cliff on their left, which it strongly resembled in general configuration, being a steep rocky face densely covered with tropical vegetation, in and out of which, by the way, darted numberless birds of brilliant plumage, whilst monkeys were to be seen here and there gambolling among the branches or staring curiously from some projecting pinnacle of rock at the new arrivals.

All along the precipitous bluff which overhangs Tumbling Run on the south side, a heavy line of earthworks had been constructed when Early retreated to this point in August, and these were now being strengthened so as to make them almost impregnable; in fact, so secure did Early consider himself that, for convenience, his ammunition chests were taken from the caissons and placed behind the breastworks.

He noted an undercurrent of rejoicing and triumphant cheeriness in the tone of the stream as it plashed among the pebbles on its precipitous bed that suggested to his mind some bars of a symphony which he determined to compose as soon as he got home again to his beloved fiddle.

Many a rocky hillside or mountain slope, otherwise waste ground, is terraced so as to detain the rains and meagre soil within its inwardly inclined banks and trenches, and made to yield a valuable crop of tea. Indeed, some of the finest flavored Chinese tea, of fabulous value where they are produced, are grown in seemingly inaccessible retreats among precipitous mountains.

Behind us rises the chain of the Rocky Mountains, the whole intermediate country, as well as the mountains themselves, except where the precipitous rocks forbid it, being covered thickly with snow. Rugged peaks and ridges, snow-clad and covered with pines, and deep gorges filled with broken rocks, everywhere meet the eye.

The mainmast, in falling, had been washed across it, and the end jamming against the cliff, it formed a breakwater, within which a group of people yet stood, almost paralysed with terror and despair, for the precipitous cliff above them afforded not the slightest prospect of escape, while the violent shaking of the wreck, and the rapid advances of the waves, showed them that in a few minutes even that uncertain foothold would be carried from beneath them.

Twice he smelled sheep, and late in the afternoon he saw a big ram looking down on him from a precipitous crag a hundred feet above. Lower down his nose touched the trails of porcupines, and often his head hung over the footprints of caribou as he sniffed the air ahead. There were other bears in the valley, too.

He turned down the head of a coulee which promised to lead him, by the most direct route if any route in the Badlands can be called direct to the river, across which, and a few miles up on Suction Creek, he confidently expected to find the Flying U wagons. The coulee wound aimlessly, with precipitous sides that he could not climb, even by leading his horse.

Likewise any striking object in Nature, such as a river, lake, precipitous cliff, with singular shaped stone such as we have here on the crescent shaped plateau rising from Brush Creek, would have been regarded as the abode of some spirit and would be worshipped accordingly.