I concluded that I should have no difficulty in crawling across the smooth space, for I reasoned that if I began to slip, I could drive the sharp end of my pick into the soft rock and thus stop myself. So, climbing up the slope through the loose earth to the base of the upper ledge, I started to cross. When I was halfway over I began to slip, and confidently raising my pick, struck the rock with all my might. God grant that I may never again feel such horror as I felt then, when the pick, upon which I had depended for safety, rebounded as if it had been polished steel, as useless in my hands as a bit of straw. I struck frantically again and yet again, but all the time I was sliding down with ever-increasing rapidity toward the edge of the abyss, safety on either side and certain and awful death below.
I remember that I gave up all hope of escape, and that after the first shock I felt no fear of death; but the few moments of my slide seemed hours, measured by the rapidity with which my mind worked. Everything, it seemed to me, that I had ever done or thought spread itself out before my mind’s eye as vividly as the wonderful panorama of the cliffs and canyons upon which I had been gazing a few moments before. All the scenes of my life, from childhood up, were re-enacted here with the same emotions of pleasure or pain. I saw distinctly the people I had known, many of them long forgotten. My mother seemed to stand out more prominently than anyone else, and I wondered what she would think when she heard that I had been dashed to pieces. I even planned how, when I did not return to camp, Cope would set out to find me, following my footsteps into the loose dirt until he reached the slide, and I wondered how he would ever get down into the canyon, and how much of my body would be left for burial.
To this day I do not know how I escaped. I suddenly found myself lying on the ledge, on the side I had left a moment before. Probably some part of my clothing, covered with dust as it was, had acted as a brake upon the polished surface. I lay for an hour with trembling knees, too weak to make my way back to camp.
This experience of mine is another instance of the fact that the human brain forgets nothing, and will yield up everything when the right kind of stimulus is applied.