We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I have ever seen.
It wound in corkscrew curves down the face of the colossal precipice—a
narrow way, with always the solid rock wall at one elbow, and
perpendicular nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting procession
of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steep
and muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you had to pass a
tolerably fat mule. I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the
mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. I preferred the
inside, of course, but I should have had to take it anyhow, because the
mule prefers the outside. A mule’s preference—on a precipice—is a thing
to be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside. His life is
mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers and packages which rest
against his body—therefore he is habituated to taking the outside edge
of mountain paths, to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or
banks on the other. When he goes into the passenger business he absurdly
clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger always
dangling over the great deeps of the lower world while that passenger’s
heart is in the highlands, so to speak. More than once I saw a mule’s
hind foot cave out over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into
the bottomless abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions the rider,
whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell.
There was one place where an 18–inch breadth of light masonry had been
added to the verge of the path, and as there was a very sharp turn,
here, a panel of fencing had been set up there at some ancient time, as
a protection. This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light
masonry had been loosened by recent rains. A young American girl came
along on a mule, and in making the turn the mule’s hind foot caved all
the loose masonry and one of the fence posts overboard; the mule gave a
violent lurch inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort, but
the girl turned as white as the snow of Mont Blanc for a moment.
The path here was simply a groove cut in the face of the precipice;
there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock under the traveler, and a
four-foot breadth of solid rock just above his head, like the roof of a
narrow porch; he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer
summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him, across a gorge or
crack a biscuit’s toss in width—but he could not see the bottom of his
own precipice unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge. I
did not do this, because I did not wish to soil my clothes.