About mid-day, the whole of the private baggage was up, and some small guns had been drawn up by the working party. By six o'clock, no one but myself and the working party were remaining below. When I made my report to the commandant of the division that everything was up, he could scarcely credit my assertion; but when I assured him of its reality, he thanked me in the most cordial manner, and said he had given the following day for the completion of that job. The large guns took four hundred men, with double and treble drag-ropes, to pull up; and some of them were, in some of the most abrupt turnings in the ascent, actually hanging by the ropes, in a very dangerous state. One gun broke from its drag-ropes, but it was, fortunately, not far from a turning, which brought it up without any accident. Indeed, scarcely an accident happened worth the relation, save one, which I pledge my word was an absolute fact. A small hackery, or cart, belonging to some of the followers of the camp, fell down a precipice upwards of eighty yards deep, the sides of which were studded with trees of an enormous size. The two bullocks who drew this cart were dashed to pieces, and the driver so dreadfully injured that he had scarcely a feature left that could be recognized as human. Some ten feet from the cart lay a child about two years of age, perfectly uninjured, with the exception of one slight bruise on its little knee. It was supposed that the cart did not upset till at the bottom of the declivity, and that not until then did the child fall out; but it was certainly one of those extraordinary circumstances which sometimes happen, for which it would be difficult satisfactorily to account. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XVIII.