THE io T H — 13TH MILE 7 1
mile ” passed into proverbial use as a standard of utter
badness and instability. When the road was cut out of
the rock it was too narrow for the easy passage of a
loaded b ea s t; where it was cut out of the hill soil, a
night’s rain sent it down the khud. Where it crossed a
cataract, the bridge gave more trouble than a quarter of
a mile of honest rock. Where, as it too often did, it
jutted straight out on bamboo brackets from the side
of the cliff, 800 feet above the whispering stream below,
the bamboos used to rot with a rapidity unknown elsewhere.
Landslips were the rule rather than the exception.
The whole length was sprayed with continual
rivulets through the rank vegetation which overhung the
track ; all afternoon these washed away the mould with
which the bald sharp rock-points of the blasted road
were covered ; all night they formed a coat of ice which
made it impossible for man or beast to stand or go upon
it. Accidents upon this stretch were painfully common j
two men were killed by a dynamite explosion, though in
common fairness to even this unfortunate exhibition of
nature, she can hardly be held responsible for the folly
of men who dry their dynamite at a fire. Four men
were overwhelmed here by a gush of liquid mud, just
when three weeks’ hard work upon the road at that
point was finished. One man slipped down, or may be
he was kicked— for the mules disliked this “ trang ”
with almost reasonable intuition— and the loss of mules
near Karponang was heavier than anywhere else upon
the road. On a winter afternoon a mile an hour was
good going along this stage. Any attempt to ride was
out of the question ; painfully prodding one’s way with
a khud-stick, one scrambled up or glissaded down over
the unfenced ice-slides thinly veiled with dirt. One’s