insufficient or uncertain supply. It is a little better known than
most because of a certain exceptional boldness in its construction;
for a distance of a few score yards it runs supported by iron
staples across the front of a sheer precipice, and for perhaps half
a mile it hangs like an eyebrow over nearly or quite vertical walls
of pine-set rock. Beside it, on the outer side of it, runs a path,
which becomes an offhand gangway of planking at the overhanging
places. At one corner, which gives the favourite picture postcard
from Montana, the rocks project so sharply above the water that the
passenger on the gangway must crouch down upon the bending plank as
he walks. There is no hand-hold at all.

A path from Montana takes one over a pine-clad spur and down a
precipitous zig-zag upon the middle of the Bisse, and thither Benham
came, fascinated by the very fact that here was something of which
the mere report frightened him. He had to walk across the cold
clear rush of the Bisse upon a pine log, and then he found himself
upon one of the gentler interludes of the Bisse track. It was a
scrambling path nearly two feet wide, and below it were slopes, but
not so steep as to terrify. At a vast distance below he saw through
tree-stems and blue haze a twisted strand of bright whiteness, the
river that joins the Rhone at Sion. It looped about and passed out
of sight remotely beneath his feet. He turned to the right, and
came to a corner that overhung a precipice. He craned his head
round this corner and saw the evil place of the picture-postcards.

He remained for a long time trying to screw himself up to walk along
the jagged six-inch edge of rock between cliff and torrent into
which the path has shrunken, to the sagging plank under the
overhanging rock beyond.