I halted when I arrived at the dangerous pass, to see if there were not another passage somewhere else, and looked up and down, but saw no way available but the one back again, which, as I had come so far, I did not choose to take, so at once put the question of its practicability to my mule by urging her forward, willing to depend upon instinct not leading the animal into a position, where she was not perfectly satisfied that her preservation was well assured. The termination of the road, where its continuity had been swept away by the land-slip, was opposite and in sight; and with this encouragement, and perhaps satisfied, that her rider was a reasonable creature, and would not attempt anything impracticable, the mule did not hesitate the least, and on my intimation to proceed, began carefully to place her feet, one after the other, on the sloping rock, and slowly entered upon the death-inviting scene. After we had started, and it was impossible to come back, as usual I began to think of the value of life, and the little courage that man really has, just sufficient to make him take the first step into peril, and then, from despair, or the recklessness of a suicide, bear himself up against all contingencies, and comes out a brave man if he lives, with the certainty of being thought a wretched fool if he is killed. With teeth set, and eyes fixed upon the yawning gulph on one side, I muttered to my mule, as if she had been my murderess, “my blood be upon your head,” and to her folly, not my own, attributed my present perilous position. Once I looked upon the other side, but there, overhanging, as if suspended by the air which it projected into, was the high black wall of the loose angular fragments of an easily fractured schistose rock, which seemed as if a thousand ton torrent of stones was suspended only whilst I passed, to follow in one rush of ruin the land-slip which, but a few mornings before, had been detached and, precipitated into the foaming river below, carrying along with it many acres of jowarhee and cotton plantations. My carefully slow mule seemed to invite the catastrophe, and it was long after I had really passed the horrible ordeal, before the conscience-stirring scene lost its repentant effect upon my mind.