A Cloud-Burst Two Or Three Days Ago, As I Afterwards Learned, Had
Done The Mischief.
On arrival at the spot, the path was seen to be
interrupted - clean gone, in fact, and not a shred of earth or trees
left; there confronted me a bare scar, a wall of naked rock which not
even a chamois could negotiate.
Here was a dilemma. I must either
retrace my steps along the weary road to Verace and there seek a night's
shelter with the gentle hay-makers, or clamber down into the ravine,
follow the river and - chance it! After anxious deliberation, the latter
alternative was chosen.
But the Trionto was now grown into a formidable torrent of surging waves
and eddies, with a perverse inclination to dash from one side to the
other of its prison, so as to necessitate frequent fordings on my part.
These watery passages, which I shall long remember, were not without a
certain danger. The stream was still swollen with the recent rains, and
its bed, invisible under the discoloured element, sufficiently deep to
inspire respect and studded, furthermore, with slippery boulders of
every size, concealing insidious gulfs. Having only a short
walking-stick to support me through this raging flood, I could not but
picture to myself the surprise of the village maidens of Crepolati,
lower down, on returning to their laundry work by the river-side next
morning and discovering the battered anatomy of an Englishman - a rare
fish, in these waters - stranded upon their familiar beach.
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