The Pali Is As Nearly Perpendicular As Can Be.

Not a bush or fern, hardly a tuft of any green thing, clothes its bare, scathed sides.

It terminates precipitously on the sea at a height of 2000 feet. Up this shelving wall, something like a sheep track, from thirty to forty-six inches broad, goes in great swinging zigzags, sometimes as broken steps of rock breast high, at others as a smooth ledge with hardly foothold, in three places carried away by heavy rains - altogether the most frightful track that imagination can conceive. {235} It was most unpleasant to see the guide's horse straining and scrambling, looking every now and then as if about to fall over backwards. My horse went up wisely and nobly, but slipping, jumping, scrambling, and sending stones over the ledge, now and then hanging for a second by his fore feet. The higher we went the narrower and worse it grew. The girth was loose, so as not to impede the horse's respiration, the broad cinch which usually passes under the body having been fastened round his chest, and yet it was once or twice necessary to run the risk of losing my balance by taking my left foot out of the stirrup to press it against the horse's neck to prevent it from being crushed, while my right hung over the precipice. We came to a place where the path had been carried away, leaving a declivity of loose sand and gravel. You can hardly realize how difficult it was to dismount, when there was no margin outside the horse.

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