I have reason to think, that this experiment, if it had been tried, would have proved fatal, and my father, while he lamented my untimely fate, would have been wholly unconscious that his own unreasonable demands had occasioned it.
I turned my steps towards the spot.

To reach the edge of the stream was by no means an easy undertaking, so many abrupt points and gloomy hollows were interposed.

I had frequently skirted and penetrated this tract, but had never been so completely entangled in the maze as now: hence I had remained unacquainted with a narrow pass, which, at the distance of an hundred yards from the river, would conduct me, though not without danger and toil, to the opposite side of the ridge.
This glen was now discovered, and this discovery induced me to change my plan.

If a passage could be here effected, it would be shorter and safer than that which led through the stream, and its practicability was to be known only by experiment.

The path was narrow, steep, and overshadowed by rocks.