as now represented by the carcass of our old friend the
yak. Then we wrapped ourselves up in our thick rugs and fur garments and
forgot our miseries in sleep.

It cannot have been long before daylight when we were awakened by a
sudden and terrific sound like the boom of a great cannon, followed by
thousands of other sounds, which might be compared to the fusillade of
musketry.

"Great Heaven! What is that?" I said.

We crawled from the tent, but as yet could see nothing, whilst the yak
began to low in a terrified manner. But if we could not see we could
hear and feel. The booming and cracking had ceased, and was followed by
a soft, grinding noise, the most sickening sound, I think, to which
I ever listened. This was accompanied by a strange, steady, unnatural
wind, which seemed to press upon us as water presses. Then the dawn
broke and we saw.

The mountain-side was moving down upon us in a vast avalanche of snow.

Oh! what a sight was that. On from the crest of the precipitous slopes
above, two miles and more away, it came, a living thing, rolling,
sliding, gliding; piling itself in long, leaping waves, hollowing itself
into cavernous valleys, like a tempest-driven sea, whilst above its
surface hung a powdery cloud of frozen spray.

As we watched, clinging to each other terrified, the first of these
waves struck our hill, causing the mighty mass of solid rock to quiver
like a yacht beneath the impact of an ocean roller, or an aspen in
a sudden rush of wind. It struck and slowly separated, then with a
majestic motion flowed like water over the edge of the precipice on
either side, and fell with a thudding sound into the unmeasured depths
beneath. And this was but a little thing, a mere forerunner, for after
it, with a slow, serpentine movement, rolled the body of the avalanche.

It came in combers, it came in level floods. It piled itself against our
hill, yes, to within fifty feet of the head of it, till we thought that
even that rooted rock must be torn from its foundations and hurled like
a pebble to the deeps beneath. And the turmoil of it all! The screaming
of the blast caused by the compression of the air, the dull, continuous
thudding of the fall of millions of tons of snow as they rushed through
space and ended their journey in the gulf.

Nor was this the worst of it, for as the deep snows above thinned, great
boulders that had been buried beneath them, perhaps for centuries, were
loosened from their re