134 A MOUNTAIN MISCELLANY 



scarcely dared raise my eyes, glued perforce to the 

 faintly wavering line which ran before me, called 

 by courtesy a path. During the two unhappy 

 hours it held me I realised, as I had never realised 

 before, the eminence to which the late M. Blondin 

 had risen. A Chinese herb picker, attempting to go 

 along this road a few months previously, slipped and 

 fell into the river. It was in flood, and the un- 

 fortunate man's body was never found. The path 

 zigzagged in and out of bushes, shot suddenly and 

 almost invisibly across smooth faces of rock, rose 

 amid the tangled roots of trees, then slipped towards 

 the rocks beside the river. A turmoil of blue 

 waters, icy cold, scarcely covering projecting rocks, 

 raced beneath. Spanning the gulf were a couple of 

 polished bark-shaved poles, on which my guide in- 

 vited me to trust myself. With quivering legs I 

 essayed the task, collapsed and ignominiously and 

 ingloriously punted myself over astraddle. This 

 obstacle surmounted, I found myself perched on an 

 enormous boulder, quite out of reach of a small 

 snagged pole, presumably placed there to aid the 

 descent. I half fell, half slipped to a pebbly beach 

 and was confronted by two more poles propped 

 perpendicularly against a wall of rock. They were 

 notched at intervals after the manner of those 

 which one sees in the cages of performing mice and 

 such-like animals. I never felt less like a perform- 

 ing mouse in all my life, but somehow or other 

 reached the top. Once only did I really enjoy my- 

 self as we crossed a level bank of green, about 

 which grew burberries, clematis, rowan-like bushes 

 with berries of white, azaleas, rhododendrons, and 

 jumpers. 1 heard a bark across the river, and there 



