We stood and looked at it, and the longer we looked--in hunting phrase--the less we liked it.

But there was no alternative.

Some one jumped off, and scrambled up on his hands and knees; his horse was driven up the bank to him--on its knees, likewise, more than once--and caught staggering among boughs and mud; and by the time the whole cavalcade was over, horses and men looked as if they had been brickmaking for a week.
But here again the cunning of these horses surprised me.

On one very steep pitch, for instance, I saw before me two logs across the path, two feet and more in diameter, and what was worse, not two feet apart.

How the brown cob meant to get over I could not guess; but as he seemed not to falter or turn tail, as an English horse would have done, I laid the reins on his neck and watched his legs.