I should expect to break my neck, and suspect I
deserved it, when, as we turned a sharp zig-zag on a steep grade at a
stiff trot, our carriage tilted, and over she went in a twinkling.

Our horses behaved admirably, which in an upset is always half the
battle. Had they started, the Diligence managers could only have
rendered a Flemish account of _that_ load. As it was, they stopped, and
the driver, barely scratched, had them in hand in a minute.

I was on the box-seat with him, and fell under him, catching a bad
sprain of the left wrist, on which I came down, which disables that hand
for a few days--nothing broken and no great harm done--only a few
liberal rents and trifling bruises. But I should judge that our heads
lay about three feet from the side of the road, which was a precipice of
not more than twenty feet, but the rocks below looked particularly
jagged and uninviting.

Our four inside passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the
concussion, but soon began to emerge _seriatim_ from the side door
which in the fall came uppermost--only one of them much hurt, and he by
a bruise or gash on the head nowise dangerous. Each, as his or her head
protruded through the aperture, began to "let in" on the driver, whose
real fault was that of following bad examples. I was a little riled at
first myself, but the second and last lady who came out put me in
excellent humor. She was not hurt, but had her new silk umbrella broken
square in two, and she flashed the pieces before the delinquent's eyes
and reeled off the High Dutch to him with vehement volubility. I wished
I could have understood her more precisely. Though not more than
eighteen, she developed a tongue that would have done credit to forty.

The drivers ahead stopped and came back, helped right the stage, and
each took a shy at the unlucky charioteer, though in fact they were as
much in fault as he, only more fortunate. I suspected before that this
trotting down zig-zags was not the thing, and now I know it, and shall
remember it, at least for one week. And I have given this tedious detail
to urge and embolden others to remonstrate against it. The vice is
universal--at least it was just as bad at Mount Cenis as here, and here
were four carriages all going at the same reckless pace. The truth is,
it is not safe to trot down such mountains and hardly to ride down them
at all. We passed scores of places where any such unavoidable accident
as the breaking of a reac