There was no snow about, and three weeks before at the same place I had found only one small drift which was shielded and half-covered with shelving rock. The dry Western air is insatiable and absorbs enormous quantities of water, and, as the Indians say, "eats snow." The snowless area about me was on a similar slope and at about the same altitude as the snow-filled woods, so the forest is evidently an effective check upon the ravenous winds. Now the rain almost ceased, and I began to descend. The upper gentle slopes were completely covered with a filmy sheet of clear water which separated into tattered torrents and took on color. These united and grew in size as they progressed from the top, and each was separated from its companions by ridges that widened and gulches that deepened as down the sides they went. The waters carried most of the eroded material away, but here and there, where they crossed a comparatively level stretch, small deposits of gravel were made or sandbars and deltas formed. Occasionally I saw miniature landslides, and, hoping for a larger one to move, I hurried downward. Knowing that the soil is often deep at the foot of crags on account of contributions from above, together with the protection from erosion which the cliffs gave, I endeavored to find such a place. While searching, I had occasion to jump from a lower ledge on a cliff to the deposit below. The distance to the slope and its real pitch were minimized by the mists. After shooting through the air for at least thrice the supposed distance to the slope, I struck heavily and loosened several rods of a landslide. I tumbled off the back of it, but not before its rock points had made some impressions. I sought safety and a place of lookout on a crag, and picked bits of granite gravel from my anatomy. Presently I heard a muffled creaking, and looked up to see a gigantic landslide starting. At first it moved slowly, seemed to hesitate, then slid faster, with its stone-filled front edge here and there doubling and rolling under; finally the entire mass broke into yawning, ragged fissures as it shot forward and plunged over a cliff. Waiting until most of the straggling, detached riffraff had followed, I hastened to examine the place just evacuated. In getting down I disturbed a ground-hog from his rock point, and found that he was in the same attitude and position I had seen him holding just before the slide started, so that the exhibition had merely caused him to move his eyes a little. In the cracks and crevices of the glaciated rock-slope from which this mass had slid, there were broken, half-decayed roots and numerous marks which showed where other roots had held. It seems probable that if the grove which sustained them had not been destroyed by fire, they in turn would have anchored and held securely the portion of land which had just slipped away.