Our road to the bridge was circuitous and precipitous, leading down the steeper side of the ridge of La Banca, where it seemed hardly possible for a goat to find foothold. It was a succession of abrupt zigzags, here and there interrupted by a stretch of horizontal pathway. To see our cavalcade it was necessary to look up or down, not before or behind. It was like descending the coils of a flattened corkscrew. In places the rocks encroached on the trail so that it was necessary to crouch low on the saddle-bow to pass beneath them, or else throw the weight of the body on the stirrup overhanging the declivity of the mountain, to avoid a collision. The most dangerous parts, however, were where land-slips had occurred, and where it was impossible to construct a pathway not liable at any moment to glide away beneath the feet of our animals. The gorge narrowed as we descended, until it was literally shut in by precipices of stratified rock strangely contorted; while huge masses of stone, rent and splintered as from some terrible convulsion of nature, rose sheer before us, apparently preventing all exit from the sunless and threatening ravine, at the bottom of which a considerable stream struggled, with a hoarse roar, among the black boulders. There was foothold for neither tree nor shrub, and our mules picked their way warily, with head and ears pointed downward, among the broken and angular masses. The occasional shouts of the arrieros sounded here sharp and percussive, and seemed to smite themselves to death against the adamantine walls. There was no room for echo. Finally the ravine became so narrowed between the precipitous mountain-sides as barely to afford room for the stream and our scant party. Here a roar, deeper, stronger, and sterner than that of the stream which we had followed, reached our ears, and we knew it was the voice of the "Great Speaker." A little farther on we came in view of the river and two or three low huts built on the circumscribed space where the two streams came close together. Our muleteers were already busy in unloading the baggage, preparatory to its being carried across the bridge on the cicatrized backs of the occupants of the huts.