HIDE TO T1IE GEYSERS : FIRST DAY. 47 your merry holiday face and kind look, as you every now and then came hack to inquire if I had ‘ een gut hesta ’ [a good horse], and next moment careered away again to the front as if borne by the wind ! How the pony contrived to pick its steps in such encumbered ground while going at such speed, I can no more tell than I can say how it is that my fingers modulate a strathspey on the flute. It was a wonderfully rough, novel, hilarious, exciting affair after all. When mixed, as we often were, with the reserve and packhorses—all of which constituted a mere drove or flock, driven on by the three guides and the volunteer aid of Carl— what knocking about, what scattering and gathering-up again! I soon found I should be knocked entirely to pieces by the graze and jam of the boxes and scrippage, as the tide of carrier- ponies crushed past me, if I did not look sharply out and warn them off with my whip. As it was, I got some severe scratches and bruises. About noon, we reached a green valley with a silver stream gliding over the pebbles, and, halting there, let the horses refresh themselves while we partook of a light lunch. The sun was now struggling amidst a dissolving mass of clouds, and the landscape, though it presented not a single human habitation, looked almost gay. By and by, we dashed into a new and drearier wilderness, an elevated moor, skirted by bare rocky hills, where we did not for miles see a patch of pastoral green, or a sheep, cow, or any other of the animals of civilisation. The wildest spot in Assynt or Applecross was a paradise to it. Still, we were all as blithe as larksand I could hear the wit of the party expressing his satisfaction with everything to a classic-loving friend— Pony me pigris ubi nulla campis Arbor aestiva recreatur aura, &c.— as he dashed past him on his miniature Bucephalus. We were indeed too sportive, I fear, and thus had become a little heedless; and so perhaps it was not a wonder that one of our Britons got a tumble, which left him for a few minutes insensible, and inflicted several painful cuts upon his face. We plastered him up admirably, and he made light of the disaster, as a rough

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