A MARVELLOUS ESCAPE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3886, 3 January 1884, Page 4

A MARVELLOUS ESCAPE.

A fatiguing day's ride, which, with the exception of the unfavorable mid-day 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 Asiatic snowpeaks of which he Kop-Dagh foims the culminating point. There was no disguising the fact —the compass* had failed us ; and, with night-closing in with wettern rapidity, wo found ourstlve* utterly and hopelesly lost. (Jur horses, too, were thoroughly jaded, and had in several rases 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 sinco we had lost the beaten track we might, for till we knew, come upon their haunts at any moment • • ■ Thus it was that even the luxury of pipes was denied, lest the tall talc 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 probably been thus occupied, and .-till no convenient place had been found, when Johannes, the driver of my urnlia, utterly exhausted, tVll by the way. This, accompanied with the distant sound of trickling water, which promi.-ed well for the ima-ning, decided, beyond argument, our .-oiii-so. To go im now became impossible, and it was at, first, thought, wise t.o as.-or-taiu the whereabouts of the watercourse, this was overruled by thu majority, so ■■vu prepared to camp. Whil'j tethering our hordes, dim slipped, but soon recovered him.-elf, on thu rough edge of what we .supposed in tho darkness, to be a ditch. This trifling cireiun.-sfanee would not have attracted attention, had not my dragoman airain called my attention to the, sound of rippling waters. Wo wore both inclined to more 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 i i 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 niuht ride, was steeped in sweet, forgetfulnV-ss. At the iirst streak of dawn we were astiro uiitethi'riijg our horses and preparing for our onward journey. A dense vapor made all as imperceptible around us as if wo had still been enveloped in the shades of night; this, h-iwuver, was not long in lifting, and then it was that we realised the terribh; death which wo had ho narrowly escaped. We bad encamped on the very fii]ge of a frightful precipice, so close, in fact, that my dragoman, the correspondent of tho' Manchester Guardian, myself, and several others had literally slept upon its very brink, and the rippling water, which had so ue-u-ly tempted us to advise, camping yet a little farther on, was new to bu .seen like a silver thread winding its way hundreds of feet below. —" Adventures of a War Correspondent."