pressed me most--the mechanical ability of the Italians. The
railways, cable-ways, machine-shops, bridges, roads, reservoirs,
concrete works that they have built, more often than not in the face
of what would appear to be unsurmountable difficulties, prove them to
be a nation of engineers.

Up to the heights toward which we were climbing so comfortably and
quickly in a motor-car there was before the war, so I was told,
nothing but a mule-path. Now there is this fine military road, so
ingeniously graded and zigzagged that two-ton motor-trucks can now go
with ease where before a donkey had difficulty in finding a footing.
When these small and handy motor-trucks come to a point where it is no
longer possible for them to find traction, their loads are transferred
to the remarkable wire-rope railways, or _telefericas_, as they are
called, which have made possible this campaign in cloudland. Similar
systems are in use, all over the world, for conveying goods up the
sides of mountains and across chasms. A wire rope running over a drum
at each side of the chasm which has to be crossed forms a double line
of overhead railway. Suspended on grooved wheels from this overhead
wire are "cars" consisting of shallow iron trays about the length and
width of coffins, one car going up as the other comes down. The floors
of the cars are perforated so as to permit the draining off of water
or blood--for men wounded in the mountain fighting are frequently
brought down to the hospitals in them--and the sides are of
latticework, and, I might add, quite unnecessarily low. Nor is the
prospective passenger reassured by being told that there have been
several cases where soldiers, suddenly overcome by vertigo, have
thrown themselves out while in mid-air. If the cars are properly
loaded, and if there is not a high wind blowing, the _teleferica_ is
about as safe as most other modes of conveyance, but should the cars
have been carelessly loaded, or should a strong wind be blowing, there
is considerable danger of their coming into collision as they pass. In
such an event there would be a very fair chance of the passenger
spattering up the rocks a thousand feet or so below. There is still
another, though a rather remote possibility: that of being shelled
while in mid-air, for certain of the _telefericas_ run within view of
the Austrian positions. And sometimes the power which winds the drum
gives out and the car and its passengers are temporarily maroo