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but it was almost perpendicular.

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To

our left the land suddenly fell away in a great precipice, perhaps a thousand feet in depth. To the right, however, it was easy to work around the summit cone. But, as the cone was climbable, we ascended it by an inclined crevice. From this eminence we could look southeastward at last along the spine of the Continental Divide, which lay but a short distance below us. The Divide here is scarcely wider than an ordinary room, and both sides fall away with startling abruptness. On the east, the precipices drop only a little way to the upsurging ice and snow waves of Swift Current Glacier, which in turn, on the far end of its shelf, plunges off into space. But the western wall of the Divide is a clean drop of more than a thousand feet. The Divide thus forms a bridge between the summit where we stood and the rising shoulder of Grinnell Mountain nearly two miles away. It is a marvelous setting for an outdoor performance of "Die Walküre." All the length of this bridge, straight along the center, ran the game trail, a little path a foot or so wide, as plain as the path a farmer makes between the kitchen door and the well. To reach it from our perch, it was necessary to drop down precipitous rocks for a hundred feet or more. Nothing but a goat or sheep could possibly reach it by circling the east side of the summit, along the wall of the precipice. It could only be reached with any ease

WHERE NATURE FAVORS THE HUNTED INSTEAD OF THE HUNTER

chasing this particular fellow with my camera, I resumed the ascent of the slope, and joined the rest of the party on a ledge fifty feet above. Looking back, I saw him curled up on top of the rock once more, apparently asleep in the sun. I tossed down a small stone which struck close to him. He got up, looked directly at me with a comical expression which seemed to say, "For goodness' sake, can't you leave me alone?" turned over, and lay down again! After that I respected his privacy.

The ledge we were now standing upon was almost at the summit of the pyramid. Directly in front of us remained but thirty or forty feet more of climbing,

by skirting the summit to the west, and traversing a shale slide in plain view. For the entire length of the trail, of course, there was no shelter whatever. It was a knife-blade against the sky. But, by the same token, an animal upon it commanded a clear vision of all the approaches, and, indeed, of the valleys far below on both sides, not to mention a wilderness of other valleys and snowclad peaks. Should any enemy be detected approaching, the goats or sheep had only to trot as far as the shoulder of Grinnell Mountain. There, to the left, they could turn out on the broken ledges where they could speedily conceal themselves; or, if they chose, they could keep straight on along the Divide, dropping down a five-hundredfoot precipice to the head wall above Grinnell Glacier, follow a dim game trail along that wall, and scramble up the mansard roof of Gould Mountain, at the farther end. We followed their trail hopefully a long distance, but either they were on other ranges that day or they saw us before we could see them (not at all impossible) and took themselves off.

At any rate, no glimpse either of goats or sheep rewarded us. Our reward was a thrilling tramp over a rock bridge spanning two yawning holes, with nothing alive above us except a bald eagle which sailed out from the peak of Gould on silent pinions and with wings motionless as an aeroplane dropped gradually across the cañon to the timber-line. Be

low us, however, was the wilderness of flowered upland meadows, dazzling snow - fields, writhing glaciers, green lakes, and towering precipices. It is small wonder that the mountain sheep rears the proudest head of any animal alive.

We saw both our first goats and our first sheep at Iceberg Lake. This lake lies at the base of a vast precipice which curls around the green water and the glacier spilling into it, forming almost a semicircle. It is one of the wildest and most impressive cliff walls in 'Glacier Park, especially as its summit for several miles is broken into castles and battlements which cut superbly against the sky. This cliff has been climbed,

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AN INACCESSIBLE WORLD OF PRECIPICES AND EVERLASTING SNOW

and one of the men who accomplished the feat was with our party. Unfortunately, we had just then neither the time nor the equipment to make the attempt again, but he pointed out to me, as nearly as he could remember it, the route he followed up the forbidding wall.

"I watched the goats for a day or two," he said, "and then started up from a point to which I had seen them descend. As I suspected, they had a regular trail up the cliff, though in places. you wished almightily that you were a goat yourself, to follow 'em. As nearly as I can recall, the trail came out on the summit about at that depression-' I was following his finger, which

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pointed to a V between two summit battlements, close above several small patches of snow, when suddenly we both saw that these snow patches were in motion.

"Hello!" he cried, "the goats are coming down now!"

They were, indeed; and for an hour or more we watched them, till our necks ached. The Rocky Mountain goat (Oreamnos montanus) in reality is not a goat at all, but a distant relative of the antelope. Its nearest kin is said to be the alpine chamois. But it undoubtedly looks like a goat, as much as it looks like anything. It might have been the original of the famous story, "There ain't no

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT IS A RELATIVE OF THE ALPINE CHAMOIS

such animal!" Its body is about four feet long, and it stands three feet high at the shoulders. Its long hair is snow white, and it not only wears a beard, but an apron and a full set of pantalets. The mountain goat is said to be stupid and rather slow, but it is wise enough to dwell forever far above timber, amid the glaciers and the precipices, and after you have watched a few goats on a morning's stroll, you are not surprised at the the statement of old mountain hunters who say that its chief enemies are the eagles. (Of course the high-power_rifle is excepted. That accursed invention is outside of nature, as, in our opinion, are most of the people who use it.)

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The flock of goats were watching were at first almost indistinguishable, so high were they on

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THE MOUNTAIN WOODCHUCK CRAWLS OUT ON A HEIGHT TO SUN HIMSELF

the cliff, and resembled merely white flecks of snow in motion. From where we stood-probably half a mile out from the base of the wall, and three thousand feet at least below-there did not appear to be anything whatever for the goats to walk on, but of course there was a ledge, and no doubt verdure upon the ledge, for now and then a goat stopped, evidently to browse. Travers

ing the ledges in a series of switchbacks, the goats finally descended far enough to give us a clearer view. There were twelve adult animals, but only two kids, which appeared very frisky. One billy was leading the way, and for the most part taking things easy. But once or twice he would reach a spot where agility was called for, and then he would appear to slide over a ledge headfore

most, landing several times his own. length below. The rest would follow, in single-file. Enos R. Mills, a keen observer of Rocky Mountain life, has vividly described in one of his books the descent of a startled goat from a ledge where he had cornered the animal. It went over head foremost, and in its headlong descent kicked against the cliff side with all four hoofs, till it worked itself some distance to the left and landed on a little shelf over twenty feet below, with all four feet bunched, its shoulders almost coming up through its skin with the impact. Naturally, no animal could return by such a route, but the places they will scale sometimes surprise even the old hunters. This particular herd we were watching descended nearly the entire height of the cliff, to a big snow-field which swept up along

the shale pile at the bottom like a wave dashing against a headland. At this point they all walked out on the snow and remained there several minutes. It was a warm July day, and they were evidently hot and thirsty.

When they were ready to return, the old billy again led the procession, but the two kids were having altogether too good a time; they didn't wish to return. They were gamboling and running races on the snow (which, by the way, was inclined at an angle of at least fifty degrees) like a pair of puppies. An adult goat had to go after them and drive them into line. Then the procession started up the cliff once more. We were curious to see if they followed the same route as on the descent. With the exception of one or two spots, they did. At the points where, on the descent, they

AN EAGLE BEARING OFF A JUICY KID OR LAMB

had jumped straight down, they now on the return made a switchback detour to the right or left. Otherwise, so far as we could detect from below, they kept to a perfectly definite path. Human trails up steep places also have frequently just such short cuts for the descent. The flock did not go all the way to the summit. They stopped where we had first seen them, evidently on a shelf a hundred feet (or perhaps more) below the ridge peak. Here they scattered somewhat, and several of them quite disappeared, either behind projections or into caves. It was evidently a familiar feeding-ground of theirs, and perhaps the two kids had been born in that lofty cradle. Comparatively secure against any attack from above, save that of an eagle, they could look out from their dizzy pasturage over the entire universe below, and all along the vast semicircle of precipice. It is thus, say

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