Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/254

222 we were, I believe, the first winter travellers living who had ascended at that season, we had an excellent opportunity of judging. My guide also told me that I was the only señora who had performed some feat or other; but I could not exactly understand what.

At 8.30 we began the descent, planting our pikes and our heels in the soft stuff, sliding down ten or twelve yards at a time, and arrived in a quarter of an hour at the little plain base. Here we breathed for a few moments, and then started again for the descent of that truly Mal Pais. It was even worse to descend. I only wondered how we got up in the dark without breaking our ankles or legs over those colossal ruins, called the "Hobberings," of the Peak. Twice twisting my ankle in the loose masses, though not badly, warned me that it was better to take my time than get a bad hurt; and the others were most considerate to me, both going and coming, begging me not to be ashamed to stop as often and as long as I liked. We were therefore two hours coming down, picking up the discarded garments on the way, and inclining a little to the right, to see the ice cave—Cueva de Zelo—which occupied twenty minutes. It is a large cavern in the rock, hung with huge icicles, and covered over with ice inside. We now descended to the place we had mounted on horseback in the night. How the poor beast ever came up it is my astonishment; and I am sure, if it had been daylight, I should have been a great deal more frightened than I was. It was a case of "poling" down on our heels again; and our two guides hailed the