he 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.

Every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places, one came across
a panel or so of plank fencing; but they were always old and weak,
and they generally leaned out over the chasm and did not make any rash
promises to hold up people who might need support. There was one of
these panels which had only its upper board left; a pedestrianizing
English youth came tearing down the path, was seized with an impulse to
look over the precipice, and without an instant's thought he threw his
weight upon that crazy board. It bent outward a foot! I never made a
gasp before that came so near suffocating me. The English youth's face
simply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. He went swinging
along valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled a
coroner by the closest kind of a shave.

The Alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box made fast between
the middles of two long poles, and sometimes it is a chair with a back
to it and a support for the feet. It is carried by relays of strong
porters. The motion is easier than that of any other conveyance. We met
a few men and a great many ladies in litters; it seemed to me that most
of the ladies looked pale and nauseated; their general aspect gave me
the idea that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering. As a
rule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery to take care of
itself.

But the most frightened creature I saw, was a led horse that overtook
us. Poor fellow, he had been born and reared in the grassy levels of the
Kandersteg valley and had never seen anything like this hideous place
before. Every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out from
the dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide and pant as
violently as if he had been running a race; and all the while he quaked
from head to heel as with a palsy. He was a handsome fellow, and he
made a fine statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see him
suffer so.

This dreadful path has had its tragedy. Baedeker, with his customary
over terseness, begins and ends the tale thus:

"The descent on horseback sho