Our leisurely and easy trek downstream now came to an end, for just after passing the Great Fish, we came to a bend where the mountain converged upon the river, the course of which became tortuous in the extreme; and at length an apparently impenetrable barrier of peaks stretched before us, through which it appeared impossible that the river could penetrate. And then trouble began. In places we scrambled for hours along precipitous slopes, cumbered with fallen rocks, and with swirling rapids below us; a mile or so of easier going where the country was more open, and again a mountain spur would shoulder the river aside. This time the abrupt slope would be dense with high and tangled thorn-bush through which we had to cut a way, whilst here and there a huge fallen rock or a whole landslide from the cliffs above would bar further progress, till we had crawled round, over, or under them, at imminent risk of breaking our ponies’ necks or legs, as well as our own. At times we were obliged to descend into the actual river-bed, and had the water not been low, these traverses would, of course, have been impracticable, and a sudden freshet upstream would certainly have accounted for the lot of us, had the flood caught us in one of these spots. The worst going for the ponies was over these places, for the huge rocks and boulders were rounded, slimy, and slippery with mud, exactly like boulders on a sea-beach at low tide. But, to me, the biggest nightmare of a spot was where, on the steep slopes of a mountain rising abruptly from the water, a big drift of sand rested. I do not know at what angle sand will rest, but certainly it was steeper than 45 degrees, and dry and loose. We could not get above it, for there the cliff was vertical, and the men warned us that we must keep going as fast as possible, as to stand still a minute meant being half-buried, and slipping down with the sand to the swirling water below. The ponies would scarcely face it, and were plainly scared out of their wits, and I did not like it myself. But there was no alternative, and no time to stay and think about it, for it was nearly dark, and we could not stay where we were, whilst about a mile ahead we could see open ground and grass. I don’t know how we managed that mile; it was one wild flounder and scramble, a case of plunging through loose, shifting sand up to one’s knees almost, dragging a frightened pony behind, and always climbing upwards as well as forward, to compensate for the slipping-down of the whole bank of sand. I was heartily glad when it was over, and though I have crossed that sand-slide twice since, I have always funked it.