We reached the junction of the two streams, and camped, just as the sun, disappearing behind the western hills, tinted with purple twilight the ragged peaks of the rocks that shut us in on every side. Scarce a sound of bird or beast disturbed the silence of the forest, and save the babble of the stream, as it rippled over the shingle, all nature was soon hushed in deathlike sleep. I could dimly make out in the fading light the grim hills we had to climb, towering up like mighty giants; the clear white snow, covering their summits, contrasted strangely with the sombre pine-trees, thickly covering the lower portion of the mountains. We had a stiff climb before us, and my hopes were high in expectation of bowling over big-horn (_Ovis montana_) and ptarmigan. For some distance we scrambled up the sides of the brawling torrent, whose course, like true love, was none of the smoothest, being over and among vast fragments of rock, that everywhere covered the hillside. From amidst these relics of destruction grew the Douglas pine and ponderous cedar (_Thuja gigantea_). Here the ascent was easy enough, but on reaching a greater altitude, the climbing became anything but a joke. We at last reached a level plateau near the summit, and lay down on the soft mossy grass, near a stream that came trickling down from the melting snow. Close to my couch was a talus of broken granite, that Old Time and the Frost King between them had crumbled away from a mass of rocks above. As I contemplated this heap of rocks, a cry like a plaintive whistle suddenly attracted my attention; it evidently came from amongst the stones. I listened and kept quiet. Again and again came the whistle, but nowhere could I see the whistler. A slight movement at length betrayed him, and I could clearly make out a little animal sitting bolt upright, like a begging-dog, his seat a flat stone in the middle of the heap. I had a load of small-shot in one barrel, intended for ptarmigan; raising my gun slowly and cautiously to my shoulder, I fired as I lay on the ground. The sharp ringing crack as I touched the trigger—the first, perhaps, that had ever awoke the echoes of the mountain—was the death-knell of the poor little musician. I picked him up, and imagine my delight when for the first time I held a new _Lagomys_ in my hand. Having made out what he was, the next thing to be done was to watch for others—to find out what they did, and how they passed the time in their stony citadel. I had not long to wait; they soon came peeping slily out of their hiding-places, and, inferring safety from silence, sat upon the stones and cheerily chorused to each other. The least noise, and the whistle was sounded sharper and more shrill—the danger-signal, when one and all took headers among the stones.