of the road, and a fragment of a horse-harness adhering
to it, half-way down the precipice. The guides of the party, well
accustomed to reason from such sad premises, at once saw what had
happened. Conceiving, however, that the driver had been carried down
over the cliff, and consequently to certain death, they directed their
sole care to clearing a passage for the travellers. In so doing, they
proceeded with long poles to sound the snow, and ascertain to what depth
it lay unhardened. It was in one of these "explorations," and when the
pole had sunk above ten feet deep into a mass of soft unfrozen snow,
that the man who held it found himself unable to withdraw the staff, and
called his comrades to aid him. They soon perceived, however, that the
resistance gradually yielded, and from the instinct peculiar to the
"hand"--another illustration for Sir Charles Bell--they recognised that
it must be the grip of human fingers which held the other end of the
pole. They immediately began to excavate on the spot, and in half an
hour liberated the poor postilion of the mail car, who, although hearing
the shouts and cries of the party for nearly an hour over his head,
could not succeed in making his own voice heard, and but for the
fortunate accident of the pole must have perished.

Many curious escapes were told to me, but this appeared most singular
of all; and now I come back to Steuben, or rather to the wild mountain
above it, over which, by a succession of windings, the road leads
which joins the Vorarlberg to the Tyrol. About one third of the ascent
accomplished, you come upon an abrupt turning of the way, in rounding
which a wide carriage can scarcely escape grating on the rock on one
side, while from the window on the opposite, the traveller looks down
upon * gorge actually yawning at his feet; the low barrier of wall,
which does not rise above the nave of the wheel, is a very frail and
insignificant protection ok such a spot, but when hid from view, as
it is to those seated in a carriage, the effect of the gulf is really
enough to shake common nerves. A little inscription upon a stone in
this wall records the name of the engineer--Donegani, if I remember
aright--who, deeming this spot the triumph of his skill, has selected it
whereon to inscribe his achievement. There is another meaning connected
with the place, but unrecorded; it could not, indeed, have been
transmitted like that of the Engineer, for when the event of whic