For two or three seconds we heard him striking here and there against a jutting rock or shrub, till, with a final thud, he landed on a small plateau of deep snow-drifts at least three hundred feet below.

Here he lay motionless and apparently dead, while we could see through our glasses a thin stream of crimson flow from under him, gradually staining the white snow around.
[Illustration: CROSSING THE KHADZAN] A cat is popularly supposed to have nine lives.

After my experience of the Persian post-horse, I shall never believe that that rough and ill-shaped but useful animal has less than a dozen.

The fall I have described would assuredly have killed a horse of any other nationality, if I may use the word.

It seemed, on the contrary, to have a tonic and exhilarating effect on this Patchinar pony.