A MARVELLOUS ESCAPE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1026, 15 December 1883, Page 2

A MARVELLOUS ESCAPE.

A fatiguing day’s ride, which,, with the exception of the unfat orable midday siesta, had been continued since soon after sunrise, was brought to a close by our finding ourselves somewhere in high latitudes upon that everlasting range of \siatic snowpeaks of which the Kop-Dagh forms the culminating point. There was no disguising the fact —the compass had failed us j and, with night closing in with eastern rapidity, we found ourselves utterly and hopelessly lost. Our horses, too, were thoroughly jaded, and had in several cases to be led by those who, tired as themselves, could scarcely put one leg before the other. Then again, we were in a neighborhood known to be infested by brigands, and since we had "lost the beaten track we might, for all we knew, come upon their haunts at any moment. . . . Thus it was that even the luxury of pipes was denied, lest the tell-tale spark should betray us. So we crept noiselessly along till we were almost enveloped in long, dank grass, and lost in brushwood, each man carefully leading his horse with one hand, while in the other he held his six-shooter, ready for emergencies. Half an hour had been thus probably occu pied, and still no convenient place had been found, when Johannes, the driver of my araba, utterly exhausted, fell by the way. This, accompanied with the distant sound of trickling water, which promised well for the morning, decided, beyond argument, our course. To go on now became impossible, and it was at first thought wise to ascertain the whereabouts of the watercourse, this was overruled by the majority, so we prepared to camp. While tethering our horse, one slipped, but soon recovered himself, on the rough edge of what we supposed, in the darkness, to be a ditch. This trifling circumstance would not have attracted attention, had not my dragoman again called my attention to the sound of rippling waters. We were both inclined to move our camp on a little nearer to the inviting allurement, but finding that several of our party had picketed their horses meanwhile, and were already rolled up in their huge cloaks, prepared to snatch what sleep they could before daylight, we abandoned the idea. In a very few minutes all remembrance of that dreary night ride was steeped in sweet forgetfulness. And now comes the denouement. At the first streak of dawn we were astir untethering our horses and preparing for our onward journey. A dense vapor made all as imperceptible around us as if we had still been enveloped in the shades of night; this, however, was not long in lifting, and then it was that we realised the terrible death which we had so narrowly escaped. We had encamped on the very edge of a frightful precipice, so close, in fact, that my dragoman, the correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, myself, and several others had literally slept upon its very brink, and the rippling water, which had so nearly tempted us to advise camping yet a little farther on, was now to be seen like a silver thread winding its way hundreds of feet below.—“ Adventures of a War Correspondent.” “Good Words.”