Searching the snow-sheet below with a field-glass, I discover a minute spot on the white surface. Its movement, slow but unmistakable, assures me that it is Lindsley returning from the site chosen for our camp to-night. Although apparently near at hand, he forms but an inconspicuous speck on the vast snow-field. {135} Having learned all that I could of the geology of the cliff, and the gathering clouds rendering it unnecessary to climb the summits above, we descended with even more difficulty than we had encountered on our way up, and met Lindsley as he reached the pass. Resuming our packs, we started on, knowing that Crumback would follow our trail; and after two hours' hard tramping over a snow surface rendered somewhat soft by the heat of the day, but fortunately little crevassed, we reached the place chosen for our camp. Crumback soon joined us, and we pitched our tent for the night. The place chosen was on a little island of débris, the farthest out we could discover from the base of the great cliff on the north. We judged that we should there be safe from avalanches, although the screech and hiss of stones falling from the cliff were heard many times during the night. Lindsley and Crumback, on revisiting the site of our camp two days later, found that a tremendous avalanche of snow and rocks had in the mean time fallen from the cliffs and ploughed its way out upon the glacier to within fifteen or twenty feet of where we had passed the night. They remarked that if the avalanche had occurred while we were in camp, our tent would not have been reached, but that we should probably have been scared to death by the roar. FIRST FULL VIEW OF ST. ELIAS. Leaving Crumback and Lindsley to make our camp as comfortable as possible, Kerr and I pressed on with the object of seeing all we could of the country ahead before the afternoon sunlight faded into twilight. Mount St. Elias had been shut out from view, either by clouds or by intervening mountains, for several days; but it was evident that on approaching the end of the Pinnacle pass fault-scarp we should behold it again, and comparatively near at hand.