SUCCEED IN GETTING OVER. 2S1 



the sloping rock, and slowly entered upon the 

 death-inviting scene. After we had started, and it 

 was impossible to come back, as usual I began to 

 think of the value of life, and the little courage 

 that man really has, just sufficient to make 

 him take the first step into peril, and then, from 

 despair, or the recklessness of a suicide, bear him- 

 self up against all contingencies, and comes out 

 a brave man if he lives, with the certainty of being 

 thought a wretched fool if he is killed. With 

 teeth set, and eyes fixed upon the yawning gulph 

 on one side, I muttered to my mule, as if she had 

 been my murderess, " my blood be upon your 

 head," and to her folly, not my own, attributed my 

 present perilous position. Once I looked upon the 

 other side, but there, overhanging, as if suspended 

 by the air which it projected into, was the high 

 black wall of the loose angular fragments of an 

 easily fractured schistose rock, which seemed as if 

 a thousand ton torrent of stones was suspended 

 only whilst I passed, to follow in one rush of ruin 

 the land-slip which, but a few mornings before, had 

 been detached and precipitated into the foaming 

 river below, carrying along with it many acres of 

 jowarhee and cotton plantations. My carefully 

 slow mule seemed to invite the catastrophe, and 

 it was long after I had really passed the horrible 

 ordeal, before the conscience-stirring scene lost its 

 repentant effect upon my mind. 



Having got safely over this delicate pass of 



