had covered the narrow track, but
beneath it all was frozen hard and was very slippery. The snow hid many
holes in the ice or dangerous rocks, while landslips had carried away
large portions of the path. No wonder that men and beasts unused to such
ground staggered and fell and rolled down the sides of the precipice. At
length the path, barely passable before, grew narrower still; the army
halted, and an active, light-armed soldier offered to go forward, and
discover if the track became wider, and whether it was possible for even
the men to go on. But the further he went the worse matters seemed. For
some distance he managed, by clinging to a few small bushes which had
wedged themselves into clefts of the rock, to lower himself down the
side of the cliff, which was as steep as the wall of a house. Then he
found right in front of him a huge precipice nearly a thousand feet
deep, formed by a recent landslip, which entirely blocked what was once
a path. As long as this rock remained standing it was plain that no man,
still less an army, could get round it.

[Illustration: He found right in front of him a huge precipice.]

Climbing painfully back the way he had come, the soldier at once went
with his report to Hannibal, who instantly made up his mind what to do.
He carried supplies of some sort of explosive with him--what it was we
do not know--and with this he blew up the rocks in front till there was
a rough pathway through the face of the precipice. Then the soldiers
cleared away the stones, and after one day's hard work the oxen, bearing
the few stores left, and the half-starved, weary horses, were led
carefully along, and down into a lower valley, where patches of grass
could be seen, green amidst the wastes of snow. Here the beasts were
turned loose to find their own food, and a camp was pitched to protect
them.

Still, though the path had proved wide enough for horses and oxen, it
was yet far too narrow for the elephants, and it took the Numidian
troops three more days to make it safe for the great creatures which had
struck such terror into the hearts of the mountain tribes. But weak as
they were, the skin hanging loose over their bones, they made no
resistance, and soon the whole army was marching towards the friendly
Gauls, in the valley of the Po.

This was how in fifteen days Hannibal made the passage of the Little St.
Bernard five months after he had set out from Carthagena. But the
journey had been accomp