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Distress or a find was to be signalled by a gunshot or by heliograph of sunlight on a pocket mirror; but many a man strayed beyond rescue of signal and never returned to his waiting 'pardners. Some were caught in snowslides, only to be dug out years later. Many signs guided the experienced prospector. Streams clear as crystal came, he knew, from upper snows.

The two men from Waltheim passed this first winter as contentedly as the autumn, and the same contentment lasted into the spring, when the avalanches came crashing down the mountain sides. When the danger of snowslides was somewhat less, some travelers began to come through the pass, and one of the first who came was Hallheimer, the trader.

The top earth, which had to be removed to uncover the sand-bank, was full of jagged rocks that had come down in snowslides from the mountain and below this top earth was a strata of small, smooth boulders "river wash." This troublesome "overburden" necessitated the use of iron instead of wooden riffles, as the bumping and grinding of the boulders would soon have worn the latter down to nothing.

The Chilkoot Pass, is a high pass about a mile high and steep as a house roof. And is also subject to very heavy snowslides. It was here where a short time before 148 soldiers in the British Army were all burried forever without any Sky-Pilot or Undertaker's assistance. We crossed through Jacobs Ladder where were six-hundred steps cut into the solid ice.

Up here it's not lack of moisture that stunts and retards their growth. It's fighting the elements cold, storm-winds, snowslides. I suppose not one in a thousand seedlings takes root and survives. But the forest fights hard to live." "Well, Ken, we may as well sit back now and talk forestry till Buell skins all he wants of Penetier," said Dick. "It's really a fine camping-spot.

"This seemed to be a favorite place for the lions to kill sheep. They are great hands to kill sheep in about the same place. Far up on the Boulder way up near the head Col. Pickett and I found nineteen or twenty skulls of sheep by one rock. There was a wonderful lot of them. They had been killed at various times, and in a place where they never could have been killed by snowslides.

Perhaps she was debasing her talent; this kind of thing was rather a theatrical trick than music. For all that, it needed feeling, and she knew the old Border ballads and their almost forgotten airs. Jim was very still when she began to sing, for her voice and the music moved him strongly. The air was wild, the rude words rang with something one felt when one battled with floods and snowslides.

These periodical journeys never occupied less than two weeks, and in the present instance he had been absent several days beyond that period, so that some anxiety was felt for him, since every trip was attended with more or less danger. He was exposed to the peril of storms, snowslides, wild animals and hostile Indians. The elemental disturbances in the Sierras are sometimes of a terrific nature.

I've wandered for days on a mountain top, lost, living on dried currants and milk chocolate, and Lord! how I hate milk chocolate! I've dodged snowslides, and slept in trees; I've endured cold, and hunger and thirst, through you. It took me years to get used to the idea of passing a timber wolf without looking around, but I learned to do it because of you. You made me.

Raging floods, snowslides, and rocks that rolled down the mountain side and smashed the track never daunted them. Their character had something of the clean hardness of finely tempered steel. But Charnock was different. "So you think of quitting?" Festing said at length. "I'm forced to quit; I'm in too deep to get straight.