gree, and
the progress slow. After a while I noticed a series of lofty snow
tunnels over the raging stream, which is earlier in the season covered
entirely by a vault of ice and snow. The higher I got the harder and more
slippery grew the snow. The soles of my shoes having become soaked and
frozen made walking very difficult. At 12,000 feet, being about three
hundred feet above the stream, I had to cross a particularly extensive
snow-field, hard frozen and rising at a very steep angle. Some of my
coolies had gone ahead, the others were behind. Notwithstanding the track
cut by those ahead, it was necessary to re-cut each step with one's own
feet, so as to prevent slipping. This was best done by hammering several
times into the white sheet with the point of one's shoe until a cavity
was made deep enough to contain the foot and to support one upright. It
ought to be done carefully each time, but I fear I had not the patience
for that. I thought I had found a quicker method, and by raising my knee
high, I struck the snow with my heel, leaving my foot planted until the
other one had by the same process cut the next step.

[Illustration: ZAZZELA MOUNT, NEAR GUNGI]

[Illustration: INVOLUNTARY TOBOGGANING]

It was in giving one of these vigorous thumps that I hit a spot where,
under a thin coating of snow, was hard ice. My foot, failing in its
grip, slipped, and the impulse caused me to lose my balance. I slid down
the steep incline at a terrific pace, accompanied in my involuntary
tobogganing over ice and snow by the screams of my horror-stricken
coolies. I realised that in another moment I should be pitched into the
stream, which would have meant being carried under the long tunnel of ice
to meet certain death beneath it. In those few seconds I found time to
speculate even as to whether those stones by the water's edge would stop
me, or whether the impetus must fling me past them into the river. I
attempted to get a grip in the snow with my frozen fingers, to stem
myself with my heels, but with no success, when I saw ahead of me a large
stone rising above the snow. With desperate tension of every nerve and
muscle, I knew as I approached it, with the foaming water yonder, that it
was my only hope. I consciously straightened my legs for the contact. The
bump was tremendous, and seemed to shatter every bone in my body. But it
stopped me, and I was saved only a few feet from the water's
edge--miraculously, although fearfully br