THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 59 



the almost infuriating misery of having, every now 

 and then, to cross miles of rugged blocks of stone, 

 across which no ragged rascal that ever lived could 

 possibly run. Nevertheless, the cut road, running as 

 it often does without any parapet, or with none to 

 speak of, and only seven or eight feet broad, across 

 the face of enormous precipices and nearly precipitous 

 slopes, is even more dangerous for equestrians than 

 are the rude native paths. Almost every year some 

 fatal accident happens upon it, and the wonder only 

 is that people who set any value upon their lives are 

 so foolhardy as to ride upon it at all. A gentleman of 

 the Forest Department, resident at Nachar, remarked 

 to me that it was strange that, though he had been a 

 cavalry officer, he never mounted a horse in the course 

 of his mountain journeys ; but it struck me, though 

 he might not have reasoned out the matter, it was 

 just because he had been a cavalry officer, and knew 

 the nature of horses, that he never rode on such paths 

 as he had to traverse in Kunawar. No animal is so 

 easily startled as a horse, or so readily becomes restive : 

 it will shy at an oyster-shell, though doing so may 

 dash it to pieces over a precipice ; and one can easily 

 guess what danger its rider incurs on a narrow para- 

 petless road above a precipice where there are monkeys 

 and falling rocks to startle it, and where there are 

 obstinate hillmen who will salaam the rider, say what 

 he may, and who take the inner side of the road, in 

 order to prop their burdens against the rock, and to 



