I was dining with some friends at Gibraltar when the story was told of long ago times when a couple of mad midshipmen rode ponies for a wager up the Mediterranean stairs. This is a stone stairway up the eastern wall of the Rock which is sheer and some thirteen hundred feet high. The story had special interest for me because my father was one of the two mad middies. He had told me that the ponies were not frightened, except at the last flight of all when the Atlantic wind was blowing into their faces over the summit. There a step was missing, the ponies reared, and both lads had to dismount, losing a wager for which the leader had undertaken the ride. The ponies were Spanish, of the type which re-stocked North America. I frightened an English horse into hysterics with such small rock walls as I could find in Wales, but have never known an American range animal to show very much alarm. My worst climb was made in twelve hours, with {61} three horses up a 3,600 foot cliff where a trail would have been a convenience. The pack and spare horses pulled hard at times because, although ambitious animals, they would have preferred some other way to heaven. That is why the lead rope got under the saddle-horse's tail, which made him buck on a ledge overhanging blue space where there really was no room. A little later the led horses pulled my saddle horse over the edge of a crag. I got off at the top, and the horse lit on his belly across a jutting rock about twelve feet down. He thought he was done for until I persuaded him with the lead rope to scramble up again. Near the summit the oak and juniper bushes forced me to dismount, leading the horses one at a time under or round stiff overhanging branches on most unpleasant ground. They showed off a little because they wished to impress me, but I found out afterwards that horses or even cattle, held at the foot of that cliff until they are hungry, will climb to the top for grass. The place is known as The Gateway and leads up out of the Cañon Dolores in Colorado to the Mesa la Sal in Utah. Much more dangerous was a 4,000 foot grass slope down from the Mesa Uncompaghre into the Cañon Unaweep. I managed that by {62} leading the horses and quartering the slope in zigzags. I was much more frightened than they were. [Sidenote: Bad ground] Many times I have ridden along the rim rock of cliffs of any height up to a mile sheer, and so far from being afraid, I found some horses preferred the very edge. One may ride slack rein where one would never dare to venture afoot. But although range horses like cliffs, they are poor climbers. One may ride them up any place where a man can climb without using his hands, but they will never face a step above knee high. Sometimes I have been obliged to pass my rope round a tree and pull my horse down walls that he dared not jump. Even then he would argue the point. [Sidenote: Horse sense]