India 2001 books

"
This day's riding was the worst we had yet experienced. Our horses were
fagged, the road abominable, great stones everywhere on the degenerated
Turkish roads.
The Turkish road is a narrowish path of flat paving-stones laid directly
upon mother earth: but that is the first stage. In the second stage the
paving-stones have begun to turn and lie like slates on a roof; in the
third they have turned completely on edge, like a row of dominoes, and
the horses, stepping delicately between the obstacles, pound the exposed
earth to deep trenches of semi-liquid mud. In the fourth stage the
stones have entirely disappeared, leaving only the trenches which the
horses have formed, so that the path is like a sheet of violently
corrugated iron. Most of the tracks are now between the third and fourth
stages of degeneration. One never knows how far the horse will plunge
his legs into the trenches, for sometimes they are very shallow, and
sometimes the leg is engulfed to the shoulder.
Jan's horse slipped over one domino, went up to the shoulder into a
trench, and off came the rider.


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