Then we turned north, and the next day was wearisome: not so much from the length of the march, it was only thirty miles, as from the incessant climbing. We had a mountain to cross, to which all that we had hitherto seen was a mere joke. The Afghans call the mountain the “Tooth-breaker” (Dandan shikan). I don’t mind trifling adventures, such as riding along the tops of walls, or foot-wide bridges, but when it comes to riding an iron-shod horse along smooth rock, slanting to a precipice of unknown depth--well, it is past a joke. We had to do it, and then descend a horrible “zig-zag.” I don’t call it a path, because the predominant features were boulders, smooth tilted slabs, and rolling pebbles. You lean back in the saddle, leaving your horse to make his own arrangements. He picks his way warily, lower and lower, and you thank Heaven you have got so far, when, just as you reach the end of one “zig,” and your horse’s nose is over the edge, there is a crunching slip of his hind feet: you catch in your breath and--think. But he does not make a plunge over the edge, he pivots round on his four feet, and goes down the “zag.” This is repeated frequently, and at last, after many years, you arrive with your nerves in a shattered condition at the bottom. The next time I came over this road, a year or two later, there were accidents; but that I will speak of later. We travelled on, day after day, through valleys and over mountains--sometimes putting up at villages, sometimes camping in our tents. Rain and hail alternated with scorching heat. To blacken you properly, you want a dry scorching heat, alternating with icy winds and hail. Some of the soldiers looked exactly as if they had been smoked: the eyelids and creases of the face being white--the rest black. [Sidenote: Story of Ishak’s Rebellion.]