"It must be eight or nine miles, by water, from our last camp to where they are to wait for us, and the ladies couldn't go so far through the thick timber in the valley." Kinnaird looked beneath him.
"Well, I don't think anybody could get straight down from here," he said.
It was clearly beyond the power of those who were with him, as they quite realized.

A few yards away, the hillside fell almost precipitously for perhaps a thousand feet to the tops of the pines below.

Part of it was smooth rock, but long banks of gravel lay resting in the hollows at so steep a slope that it was evident that a footstep would be sufficient to dislodge them.

Indeed, without that, every now and then some of them broke away and plunged down into the valley.

Close behind the party a wall of crags rose sheer for a hundred feet at least.