and I was thus enabled in some degree to arrest his downward progress before he went too far to be recovered.
There he clung, the poor brute, with merely his nose above the edge of the precipice, and he eagerly holding on to the bank like a man standing on a ladder. Beneath him sloped down the declivity for several hundred feet, till the mist terminated the view; what was beyond that limit I could only infer by the roar of the river beneath, which sounded very deep indeed, so that had the poor fellow missed his hold, or taken one roll, his doom was certain. In an emergency how rapidly one can think! There was no help within many miles, and a very few minutes would decide his fate. I had sold his worthy predecessor, when rather hard pressed for cash, and had paid only forty dollars for him; but he looked very valuable as he hung on that precipice, and I imagined to myself what could I do without him there in that wilderness, with such a journey before me, and I alone; the night, too, falling fast. I felt for the poor creature, and I pitied myself, for I could ill afford to lose him, particularly there and then. To get him straight up would have required twenty men's strength. No time was to be lost. I feared every moment that he would begin to struggle, and then I must be prepared to know how long I dare hold on, and what instant I must let him go, lest he should jerk me over along with himself, and both be lost. A thought struck me. I got his head round on one side; he seemed to understand my object, and slightly shifted one foot, while I held him as fast as I dared by the rein. He then dug the other foot into the ground, and soon I had the gratification of having him right across the hill, and then by a little maneuvering I moved him, step by step, till I got him up. He was not much hurt, and after a little while I mounted, but had not proceeded half a mile when he trod on another soft edge. I felt him stagger, and had just time to free my right foot from the stirrup, and pitch off into the mud of the road, as he went over the bank. There I hung, half-way on the path, my legs dangling over the margin. Having scrambled up, I saw that he had dropped down about twelve feet, on a heap of
