And, added to
this was the discomfort, amounting at times to positive pain,
caused by the soroche.
Hardly ever did we find ground sufficiently broad for a breathing
space, save when our arriero led us, almost by magic it seemed,
to a camping place for the night. We would ascend the side of a
narrow valley; on one hand roared a torrent some hundreds of feet
below; on the other rose an uncompromising wall of rock. So
narrow would be the track that as I sat astride my mule my
outside leg would be hanging over the abyss.
But the grandeur, the novelty, and the variety of the scenery
repaid us; and Le Mire loved the danger for its own sake. Time
and again she swayed far out of her saddle until her body was
literally suspended in the air above some frightful chasm, while
she turned her head to laugh gaily at Harry and myself, who
brought up the rear.
"But Desiree! If the girth should break!"
"Oh, but it won't."
"But if it should?"
"Tra-la-la! Come, catch me!"
And she would try to urge her mule into a trot--a futile effort,
since the beast had a much higher regard for his skin than she
had for hers; and the mule of the arriero was but a few feet
ahead.
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