1 34 A JOURNEY IN INDIA, TIBET,
2 severe one, to Boddu Bochs; and, wishing him the art
3 of Prometheus, to improvise twenty carriers in a
4 desert, I pushed forward, followed, as on the preced-
5 ing evening, by only the most necessary part of my
6 baggage.
7 The road was extremely difficult; we were obliged
8 to alight incessantly; and, in spite of their care, the
9 horses belonging to two of my escort tumbled over a
10 kind of precipice, whence they were rescued very much
11 bruised, and very lame. For my own part, I was con-
12 stantly on foot, hammer in hand, and continually
13 quitting the path, which was only a low and narrow
14 gap in a wood very thick with thorny shrubs, to
15 gain some neighbouring eminence, and determine the
16 direction of the strata with the compass. Some armed
17 servants followed me in the smallest of these circuits;
18 prudence demanded it. In one of these excursions, I
19 discovered three men hidden; and, cocking my piece
20 and bringing it to my shoulder, the three suspected
21 figures proved by their terror the excess of my circum-
22 spection. ‘They were poor peasants belonging to a
23 neighbouring village, who had taken refuge in the
24 fastnesses of the wood to avoid the passage of the
25 avalanche which chance had brought near them. They
26 gained nothing by it; I had them seized and carried
27 along the road, promising them that they should be
28 paid for their trouble. They were, so far, an addition
29 to my means of transport.
30 Nur is the name of a wretched hamlet at some height