144 SPORT. 



mountain or crag supposed to be inaccessible to 

 man, and which, so far as I was concerned, proved 

 and remained so. After cHmbing walls of rock» 

 creeping and sidling along narrow ledges over- 

 hanging dizzy precipices, so narrow in places that 

 part of the sole of the shoe was outside the rock 

 or overlapping the precipice, encouraged to the 

 passage of these mauvais pas by the confident 

 statement of one of my guides that a few steps 

 further, round the next corner, the ledge would be 

 found wnder, and leading to a spot whence the 

 summit could be easily attained ; I sustained the 

 blood-curdling disappointment of finding, when the 

 next corner was reached at last, that the ledge, 

 instead of widening, absolutely disappeared and 

 became absorbed in the sheer precipitous horrors 

 of the mountain side, necessitating a retrograde 

 movement of the most gruesome description — a 

 twisting round on the axis of the heels or toes. 

 I don't know which is the most agonising, whether 

 to turn your face to the rock wall or to the fathom- 



