We had twenty-five English miles to travel before we could reach the nearest magistrate, on a road leading through and over the mountains. It was wild and exceedingly beautiful, but correspondingly rough and difficult. Sometimes it was only the narrowest foot-path, running along a ledge of rocks overhanging the stream; sometimes it was almost lost among great boulders, which must be skirted or surmounted. The loveliest wild flowers were all around us, but for once they did not tempt us to linger. We had barely left the confines of the village before we saw in the road before us the prostrate and apparently inanimate body of a man, whom we soon recognized as our constable. He proved to be not dead, but simply fainting from the cruel beating he had received. He soon revived a little and begged us to hurry on for aid. He was too much exhausted and bruised to be carried on with us, unless we abandoned our purpose of reaching the magistracy that night, which it seemed for the best good of all to do; so most reluctantly we left him to the mercy of the villagers. It was a sore alternative, but otherwise help for the others would have been delayed many hours. When we had proceeded two or three miles farther we saw a line of armed men half kneeling barring the road in front of us, with their guns aimed apparently at us. I of course concluded that my last hour had come, but we decided that to advance with no signs of fear or doubt was the only course to pursue, and found a few minutes later that our formidable-looking opponents were only some hunters waiting game that was being driven towards them by others. Our road steadily ascended, and was more and more difficult. Where it was worst I walked to relieve the tired coolies, for even with four men and a light burden it is no easy matter to carry a chair up the mountain side on a warm April afternoon. When sunset was almost due, and we had many miles yet to go, the coolies insisted on waiting for supper. I dreaded the possible necessity of being obliged to spend a part of the night unsheltered in a country that seemed so hostile, added to which the other thought of the necessity for speed made it seem impossible and wicked to delay for such a paltry thing as food.