By the Way: Travel Letters Written During Several Journeys Abroad

by Agness Greene Foster

The sensation was awful. "Look! Look!" cried the guide, pointing down into the moraine. The clouds had separated, and the rain could be seen pouring on a little village far below, while the sun shone bright on us.

The sunshine is not warm among these snow-clad peaks. It was bitterly cold. The crunching of the snow under the iron hoofs of the horses was the only sound to be heard.

At the village of Simplon where luncheon was served, and where the horses were changed, the luggage vans were raided for warm wraps and rugs.

Half a mile from the village of Simplon the remains of a big avalanche were encountered. Men were at work clearing the roadway, and the guide ordered every one to dismount and walk across, the drivers leading the horses.

When "the road grew wider," it should not make a mental picture of a broad roadway. It is wide only in comparison with the narrow mountain pass, cut out of the side of the cliff, making a sort of ridge of sufficient width to permit but one vehicle at a time. There are places cut deeper into the rock so that two may pass. A stone parapet runs along the ledge next to the precipice to prevent accidents should the wheels come too near the edge.

At the highest point this parapet was broken. The workmen who were repairing the wall had been called to assist in clearing the lower road of the avalanche over which we had been obliged to walk.

It was at this point that one of our horses balked. The road, so narrow that it scarcely permitted the passage of the diligence,—the parapet entirely gone for a distance of many feet—the gorge, deep and black, with a roaring torrent, too far down to be seen—the very heavens weeping at our misery,—here it was the horse chose to become unmanageable.

The two in the box seat behind the driver did not realize what was happening until a shriek from some one in the body of the coach caused the entire party to turn. The driver yelled, "Jump! Jump toward the mountainside!"

God grant that rarely on human sight may dawn such a scene, horrible only to those who had occupied the coach a second before. The back wheels were over that fearful ledge, the diligence just tottering. One moment more, made heavy by its human load, one quiver of the now terrified beasts, and the whole would have been engulfed in the depths of that seething torrent.

We had jumped at the first word of command—jumped as one body. One second and it would have been too late. And the old coach, relieved of its burden, had balanced itself in an almost human manner, as if it, too, clung to life.