A few days having been passed in recruiting our strength after these fatiguing marches, we at length received orders to advance on the celebrated Bholun Pass. Nothing could be more calculated to awaken us to the difficulties of our position, or to impress us with the uncertainty of the fate that awaited us, than the imposing grandeur of the scenery on which we now entered. Let the reader picture to himself a gloomy looking gorge winding through two ranges of stupendous hills, whose rugged masses of rock and hanging declivities impend over the narrow route as if about to choke it up, or recede a short distance to some fortress-like looking freak of nature from whose imaginary bastions and parapets it seemed easy to hurl down destruction and death on the passenger, and he may easily imagine that our feelings were not of the liveliest or most comfortable nature. A handful of men could have effectually stopped our progress had there been but another Leonidas amongst the wild inhabitants of this magnificent defile, whose military skill and resolution would have enabled him to seize upon, and maintain its many points of defence. We could not conceal from ourselves difficulties so apparent, and a general and undefined feeling of uneasiness pervaded us all. We felt that if the enemy had any intention of resisting us they would not lose opportunities which nature herself appeared to indicate; and it was but too obvious that if they only knew how to avail themselves of the formidable barriers which she had placed against invasion, our situation would become critical in the extreme. Once involved in the intricacies of the Pass, the superior knowledge of the country possessed by the natives, and their familiarity with mountain warfare would enable them to harrass us at every step, and a well planned and daring attack might at once overwhelm us. Such were the reflections that suggested themselves to almost every man's mind, and many there were, I dare say, who just then thought of home, and speculated whether it would ever be his lot to revisit its peaceful fireside, and recount the dangers of which he had been the hero.