low the windings of the narrow, steep path, you have a choice
between addressing the back of the one who precedes you, and throwing a
remark over your shoulder to those who come after. Involuntarily you
fall to studying the curves of the former, and are utterly indifferent
to the fact that the latter are probably meditating upon the intricacies
of your back hair. Mule-riding is conducive to grace of neither soul nor
body; still you know you are not making such a spectacle of yourself as
did the woman just passed--who twisted about in the saddle as though
worked along by rotary motion. Perhaps not.

As you leave the villages to plunge into the woods, the flies swarm like
beggars; and it is only when the guides have cut boughs from the trees,
which you wave before you, wickedly suggesting palm branches, that you
can proceed with tolerable comfort, and without the fear of an
unexpected toss in the air, as one kick after another runs down the
line.

Each horse or mule has his own slight peculiarities of habit and
disposition. I recall one whose inordinate curiosity led him to walk
always upon the verge of the precipices, so that the rider's feet
overhung the frightful depths. Murray says it is best to allow these
animals to choose their own paths. But to hang suspended between heaven
and earth at the mercy of a strap and a mule, will shake one's faith,
even in Murray.

My horse this day was possessed of the dreamy, melancholy nature of a
poet, with the attendant lack of ambition. Every time we wound
funereally through a village, he would walk deliberately to the
mounting-steps, and wait most suggestively. Indeed, an air of
abstraction characterized all his movements; even when, as we approached
these villages, raising his head, he would seem to sniff the odors of
Araby the Blest; which was a mistake, a delusion of his fancy shared by
none of the others of the party. That he was without pride I must
confess. No stable did we pass so poor, none so mean, that he was
ashamed to pause and offer to enter with meek obdurateness.

Poetic as was his temperament, his appetites were developed in a
remarkable degree. Once upon a narrow bridge we met two walking
haystacks, out from which peered great, blue eyes. If the size of his
mouth had corresponded at all to his desires, they would have vanished
from sight in a twinkling; as it was, they barely escaped. Whether or
not insatiable thirst is an attribute of a poet, I do not know;