I tried to be brave, and I think rarely, if ever, a complaint passed my lips, but during that last day I more than once nearly committed suicide through sheer physical exhaustion.
My stock of reserved strength proved to be far greater than I had ever reason to believe it, and demand for more endurance was always met.
When my mule had some particularly difficult obstacle to surmount, she had a way of approaching it quietly and then suddenly giving a hump that filled her spine with complex curves and a burden, unless care were exercised, with compound fractures. In order to insure one's safety it is absolutely necessary to preserve an exact equilibrium directly over the said spine in a line running from the point midway between her ears to her tail. This is at times so gigantic a task that it is no wonder a temporary oblivion to bodily sensation is induced.
Poor mule! In moments when I could summon up any spare sympathy, I lavished it upon her. She seemed to be tired too.
Finally, when going down steep ravines, she ceased to lower herself and me gently from one foothold to the next, but acquired a habit of thumping down in a reckless way, giving a sort of grunt, which sometimes, for the life of me, I could not help accompanying with a groan that seemed to come from my very shoes. I had no fear of falling. In fact, I think I should have hailed it as a delightful change could we have rolled down a cliff and finished even life's journey with this one.
Lunch time found us in the midst of a pine forest, but such a sparsely grown one that the shade was a mockery. Heat, hunger, and those delightful insinuating little insects known as woodticks were not conducive to our happiness here, and more than glad were we when the arrival of our food bearer gave promise of an early change of scene.
We ate up everything we could, and then, with every nerve tingling with joy at the speedy home-coming, we mounted our faithful carriers for the last time.
Very soon after this we left the abominable but so-called wagon road, and took a short cut over the mountains. It would be but vain repetition to describe our "ups and downs" for the next few hours. The agony was just as exquisite, the scenery was just as grand and variable, but as far as I know it the English language contains no words of sufficient intensity to express more than I have already iterated and reiterated.
Presently a not far distant peak came in sight, and as we clambered up higher we could see more and more of it until finally, on an elevated plateau at its base, there appeared a collection of houses. Across that intervening space I could gain no idea of what the village would be like, but I remember thinking that, with that glorious mountain to look at, I could never get homesick.