100 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



sickening. Beneath there were dark jagged preci- 

 pices and an almost sunless torrent so deeply is the 

 Sutlej here sunk in its gorge foaming along at the 

 rate of about twenty miles an hour; above there 

 were frowning precipices and a cloudless sky, across 

 which some eagle or huge raven-like Himaliyan crow 

 occasionally flitted. 



I .saw this footpath in an exceptionally bad state 



for it is only used in winter when the higher roads 



are impassable from snow ; and after all the damage 

 of winter and spring it is not repaired until the 

 beginning of winter. But no repairing, short of 

 blasting out galleries in the face of the rock, could 

 make much improvement in it. It was not, how- 

 ever, the danger of this path which made it frightful 

 to me ; that only made it interesting, and served as 

 a stimulus. The mischief was that, in my disabled 

 and weak state, I had to exert myself almost con- 

 tinuously on it for twelve hours in a burning sun. 

 The Sugnam men did all in their power to assist 

 me, and I could not but admire, and be deeply 

 grateful for, their patience and kindness. But the 

 longest day has an end, as Damiens said when he 

 was taken out to be tortured; and we reached Pu 

 at last, my bearers, as they approached it, sending 

 up sounds not unlike the Swiss judel, which were 

 replied to in similar fashion by their companions 

 who had reached the place before them. Pii is a 

 large village, situated about a thousand feet above 



