From the tall pinnacle of rock on which they stood it looked like a great sea of sunlight, with only here and there patches of white snow where the winter winds had piled it deep.

Their ridge rose up out of a great valley.

On all sides of them, as far as a man's eye could have reached, there were blue and black patches of forest, the shimmer of lakes still partly frozen, the sunlit sparkle of rivulet and stream, and the greening open spaces out of which rose the perfumes of the earth.

These smells drifted up like tonic and food to the nostrils of Noozak the big bear.

Down there the earth was already swelling with life.