“No, Sahib; me fearee de valley shut up, no clear o’ dis trap yet Sahib.”
Caspar offered no opinion. He had kept farther out from the cliffs, and at times had been quite out of sight of them—the trees hiding their tops from his view. He fully comprehended, however, the meaning of his brother’s observations.
“Then you think the precipice runs all around the valley?” he asked, addressing the latter.
“I fear so, Caspar. I observed no outlet—neither has Ossaroo; and although not specially looking for such a thing, I had my eyes open for it; I had not forgotten our perilous situation of yesterday, and I wished to assure myself. I looked up several gorges that ran out of the valley, but the sides of all seemed to be precipitous. The chase, it is true, kept me from examining them very closely; but it is now time to do so. If there be no pass out of this valley, then are we indeed in trouble. These cliffs are five hundred feet in height—they are perfectly impassable by human foot. Come on! let us know the worst.”
“Shall we not draw out the stag?” inquired Caspar, pointing to the game that still lay under the water.
“No, leave him there; it will get no harm till our return: should my fears prove just, we shall have time enough for that, and much else beside. Come on!”
So saying Karl led the way toward the foot of the precipice, the others following silently after.
Foot by foot, and yard by yard, did they examine the beetling front of those high cliffs. They viewed them from their base, and then passing outward scanned them to the very tops. There was no gorge or ravine which they did not enter and fully reconnoitre. Many of these there were, all of them resembling little bays of the ocean, their bottoms being on the same level with the valley itself, and their sides formed by the vertical wall of granite.
At some places the cliffs actually hung over. Now and then they came upon piles of rock and scattered boulders—some of them of enormous dimensions. There were single blocks full fifty feet in length, breadth, and height; and there were also cairns, or collections of rocks, piled up to four times that elevation, and standing at such a distance from the base of the cliff, that it was evident they could not have fallen from it into their present position. Ice, perhaps, was the agent that had placed them where they lay.
None of the three were in any mood to speculate upon geological phenomena at that moment. They passed on, continuing their examination. They saw that the cliff was not all of equal height. It varied in this respect, but its lowest escarpment was too high to be ascended. At the lowest point it could not have been less than three hundred feet sheer, while there were portions of it that rose to the stupendous height of one thousand from the valley!