In some places the mail route which we follow and over which the mail is carried on the backs of runners is cut in the rock and we go down steps as even as those of the City Hall and for hours we travel over rough rocks and stones and a path so narrow that your knees catch in the vines at the side.

The mules are wonderfully sure footed and never slip although they are very little, and I am pretty heavy.

The heat is something awful.

It bakes you and will dry your pith helmet in ten minutes after you have soaked it in water.

But the scenery is magnificent, sometimes we ride above the clouds and look down into valleys stretching fifty miles away and see the buzzards half a mile below us.