190 SPORT. 



in my life — and whether I beHeved in my "star," 

 or disbeheved in the precipice, or had suddenly 

 become a fatalist, or my faculties had been be- 

 numbed and paralysed by horror, I cannot say. 

 But the fact remains that though in my mind — 

 or what remained of it during this cannon-shot 

 trajectory of the body — there might be wonder or 

 curiosity as to how it would all end, there was no 

 fear, no regret, no thought of " England, home, 

 and beauty," no farewell to life, even as I actually 

 shot over the brink ; and instead of being dashed 

 to pieces, rolled over and over, finally subsiding, 

 half smothered by the miniature avalanche which 

 accompanied me, after falling about eight or ten 

 feet on to an almost flat ledge about thirty or forty 

 feet broad, invisible from above, and immediately 

 overhanging a precipice of something like i,ooo 

 feet sheer fall. 



Not till I had extricated myself from the snow- 

 bed in which I was almost buried, and shaken 

 myself well together again, ascertained that no 



