Fourth, the three other maids.

Fifth, the luggage.

After these five sleds, containing our party, came another with the
foreign gentleman.

Each of these sleds had a driver to itself.

In this order the party went, until at length they came to the Gorge
of Gondo. This is a narrow valley, the sides of which rise up very
abruptly, and in some places precipitously, to a great height. At the
bottom flows a furious torrent, which boils and foams and roars as it
forces its impetuous way onward over fallen masses of rock and trees
and boulders, at one time gathering into still pools, at other times
roaring into cataracts. Their road had been cut out on the side of the
mountain, and the path had been cleared away here many feet above the
buried road; and as they wound along the slope they could look up at
the stupendous heights above them, and down at the abyss beneath them,
whose white snow-covering was marked at the bottom by the black line
of the roaring torrent. The smooth slope of snow ran down as far as
the eye could reach at a steep angle, filling up all crevices, with
here and there a projecting rock or a dark clump of trees to break its
surface.

The road was far beneath them. The drivers had informed them that it
was forty feet deep at the top of the pass, and that its depth here
was over thirty. Long poles which were inserted in the snow projected
above its surface, and served to mark where the road ran.