The driver had no more direct control over the mules than could be conveyed by his voice, though I must do him the justice to say that when he did open his mouth he did so to some purpose.
His mules, however, did not often require reproof, and a short grunt, with the name Garibaldi or Emanuel, sufficed to make them spring forward as if they were ashamed of being named before strangers.
The driver himself frequently makes short cuts across the angles of the road as he plods through the snow, leaving the mules to thread their way entirely according to their own judgment.
It was on one of these occasions, when the driver loitering out of sight, perhaps to cut his tobacco, was absent somewhat longer than usual, that the mules appeared to be feeling their way with more than ordinary caution, while the uneasy motion of the carriage indicated that we were not travelling upon a plain surface. Almost instinctively, I ejaculated at the top of my voice, imitating as near as I could the driver’s intonation: “Wo-a-a-h!” Every mule stopped dead short. If they had not done so, or moved on one single inch, this incident would never have been recorded by me!
Opening the door of the carriage I beheld a frightful precipice, over which we were literally hanging; while, turning round in order to step out with greater caution, I found that the weight of my body perforated the lightly-packed snow, and that I could not feel the ground beneath it. Had it not been for the firm grip I had of the wing of the carriage, I must inevitably have been precipitated into the abyss of snow-covered boulders many hundred feet deep below.
When I had recovered my footing by clinging to the wheels of the carriage, I found that there was not more than an inch of ground between us and eternity. Thus, but for the admirable patience and obedience of the mules, we must in another instant have been launched bodily down the precipice.
We looked round in vain for the driver, and it was not till I had succeeded in pulling out my lame companion, and seating him in the snow, that I saw the fellow come strolling up the hill in a cloud of tobacco smoke, singing at the top of his voice one of the patois refrains.
To punch his head was my first impulse; but this was soon dispelled by the duties imposed on me at this moment of peril.
First, if the mules moved an inch the carriage, with baggage, etc., must have lost its balance and gone down.