The boys and their companions had noticed some of the boundary marks just before they began their descent, and they could easily determine their position.
“Think you can make a landing, Jerry?” asked Jim Nestor, as he stood beside the tall lad in the pilot house. “It’s pretty rough down there.”
“Oh, I can land all right,” asserted Jerry. “I can manipulate the Comet to make her go almost anywhere, and we don’t need a very large smooth place to anchor her. But it sure is all mixed up.”
“I should say so!” exclaimed Ned.
“Looks as if some one stood up on the tops of the mountains and threw big rocks down here,” commented Bob, who had come from the kitchen, where supper was in course of preparation.
And indeed Bob’s description was as accurate as any. The floor of the long, but narrow, valley was covered with great rocks and boulders, some of them of vari-colored sandstone, and others of hard, and almost black, granite. Some were of odd shapes, and they differed in size from those almost as large as a house, to mere rocks that a lad could have tossed.
“That happened when the landslide came down,” explained Mr. Brill. “If you’d been here then you would have thought the earth was coming to an end. I never heard such a racket, and the way the rocks and earth tumbled down here was a caution. I just got out in time. If I hadn’t I might be here yet—but not alive.”
From what little view the gold-seekers had of the valley in the gathering darkness it did seem almost impossible of ascent or descent by ordinary means. It was not that the sides were so steep—though they were anything but of gentle slope—but the rugged walls, with here and there sheer precipices, made them out of the question to scale.
“Nothing but a balloon could get down here,” said Mr. Brill. “A balloon or an airship. It was a good thing you thought of these boys, Jim, or we’d never have had a chance for the gold. I don’t believe anyone else could get into this valley; or, if they could, they couldn’t get out again.”
This was not exactly so, as they learned later. For when they had been in the valley some time, and were prepared to leave, they discovered, away up on the Canadian side, a comparatively easy descent. But it was so hidden, and in such an out-of-the-way place that only by the merest accident was it located.