Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. THE cut bridle path, which has been dignified by the name of ' The Great Hindiisthan and Tibet Road,' that leads along the sides of the hills from Simla to the Nar kunda Ghaut, and from Narkunda up the valley of the Sutlej to Chini and Pangay, is by no means so exasperating as the native paths of the inner Himaliya. It does not require one to dismount every five minutes; and though it does go down into some terrific gorges, at the bottom of which there is quite a tropical climate in summer, yet, on the whole, it is pretty level, and never compels one (as the other roads too often and too sadly do) to go up a mile of perpendicular height in the morning, only to go down a mile of perpendicular depth in the afternoon. Its wooden bridges can be traversed on horseback ; it is not much exposed to falling rocks ; it is free from avalanches, either of snow or granite; and it never compels one to endure the almost infuriating misery of having, every now and then, to cross miles of rugged blocks of stone, across which no ragged rascal that ever lived could possibly run. Nevertheless, the cut road, running as it often does without any parapet, or with none to speak of, and only seven or eight feet broad, across the face of enormous precipices and nearly precipitous slopes, is even more dangerous for equestrians than are the rude native paths. Almost every year some fatal accident happens upon it, and the wonder only is, that people who set any value upontheir lives are so foolhardy as to ride upon it at all. A gentleman of the Forest Department, resident at Nac har, remarked to me that it was strange that, though he had been a cavalry officer, he never mounted a horse in the course of his mountain journeys; but it struck me, though he m...
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