Three hours later we had reached the gorge, and after some difficult scrambling and wading through turbulent torrents we arrived at the base of the Falknerwand, which rises perpendicularly upward of nine hundred feet--an altitude diminished in appearance by the tenfold greater height of the surrounding mountains. Finding, after a few minutes' close observation, that nothing could be done from the base of the cliff, we proceeded to scale it by a circuitous route up a practicable but nevertheless terribly steep incline. Safely arrived at the top, we threw down our burdens and began to reconnoitre the terrain, which we did _ventre à terre_, bending over the cliff as far as we dared. Great was our dismay to perceive that some eighty or ninety feet below us a narrow rocky ledge, which had escaped our notice when looking up from the foot of the cliff, projected shelf-wise from the face of the precipice, shutting out all view of a crevice which we had descried from the bottom, and which, as we anticipated, contained the eyrie. After consulting some time, we decided to lower ourselves down to this rock-band, and make it the base of our further movements, instead of operating, as we had intended, from the crest of the cliff, where everything but for this obstacle would have been tenfold easier. Posting one of the men at the top of the cliff to lower the heavy rope, three hundred feet in length, by means of a cord, we descended to the ledge, which was nowhere more than three feet in width, and in several places scarcely over a foot and a half. Standing in a single row on this miniature platform, we had to manipulate the rope with a yawning gulf some eight hundred feet in depth beside us, and nothing to lay hold of for support but the smooth face of the rock.