'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎208] (243/360)

208 THROUGH PERSIA ON A SIDE-SADDLE
must retrace our steps for at least two miles, and we
should then be able to make our way across the steep cliffs
into the parallel valley, where was the right road. It is
always disagreeable to have to go back on a march, but on
this occasion it was something more, as both we and our
horses were tired and discouraged, and this made the
by no means imaginary dangers of the route far more
formidable. My Arab had got quite nervous by this time,
hanging back at all the bad places, and requiring much
coaxing to persuade him to surmount them ; and as for
me, I could not help seeing very plainly that a false step
might mean a broken limb—and then ? I do not think I
am a specially nervous person, but throughout my stay in
the uncivilised parts of the Kast I was never quite free
from fear lest one of us might be ill or injured far away
from any medical aid. On our journey down to Kerman
we had had a litter carried by mules, but we had been
obliged to leave it behind on this occasion, as it would
have been impossible to get it over much of the country
we should now have to traverse. Of course we could have
improvised some sort of a stretcher, but I felt that our
'First Aid to the Injured' certificates were a sadly
insufficient equipment for setting broken bones, though I
fondly imagined that I could hunt out the symptoms of
fever or of any ordinary ailment in our medicine-book and
cure them with the tabloids in the medicine-chest.
This time, however, no medicine-books were needed, and
we finally emerged on the vast Bampur Plain, my brother
pointing out to me Kuh-i-Hamant, Kuh-i-Fanoch, and
many another peak well known to him from his former
journeys in Baluchistan, and showing me where the
Bampur River lay, and Bampur itself, the so-called capital