ed down
to them at the bottom.

So steep and glazed with ice was this gorge or gully that they were
compelled to tie themselves together with strands of Cullum. They laid
Thimble's litter on three long pieces of wood strapped together. Then,
Ghibba going foremost, one by one they followed the ascent after him,
stumbling and staggering, and heaving at the Cullum-rope to drag up poor
Thimble on his slippery bed.

The Men of the Mountains have bristly feet and long, hairy, hard-nailed
toes. But Thumb and Nod, with their naked soles and shorter toes, could
scarcely clutch the icy path at all, and fell so often they were soon
stiff with bruises. Worse still, there frequents in the upper parts of
these mountains a kind of witless or silly Mulgars, who are called
Obobbomans, with very long noses. And just as men use a spyglass for
sight, to magnify things and to bring things at a distance nearer, so
these Obobbomans use their prolonged noses for smell. Long before Thumb
and his company were come to their precipitous gully they had sniffed
them out. And, being as mischievous as they are dull-witted, they had
already scampered about, gathering together great heaps of stones, and
had now set themselves in a row, sniffing and chattering, along the edge
of the rock on both sides, and waited there concealed in ambush.

When the Men of the Mountains had climbed up some little way into the
gorge, and were scrambling and stumbling on the ice, these Obobbomans
began pelting them as fast as they could with their stones and snowballs
and splinters of ice. These missiles, though not very large, fell
heavily down the walls of the precipice. And soon the whole caravan of
Mulgars was brought to a standstill, they were so battered and
bewildered by the stones.

As soon as the travellers stopped, these knavish Long-noses ceased to
pelt them. So cautious and furtive are they that not a sign of them
could be distinguished by the Mulgars staring up from below, though,
indeed, a hundred or more of their thin snouts were actually protruded
over the sides of the chasm, sniffing and trembling.

"Does it always rain pebble-stones and lumps of ice in these miserable
hills?" said Thumb bitterly.

And Ghibba told him that it was the Long-nose mulgars who were molesting
them. They squatted down to breathe themselves, hoping to tire out the
Obobbomans. But the instant they stirred, down showered snowball, ice,
and stones once more. The travellers bou