She
till it reached the low land behind the rise, and there,
perchance, it made the swamp through which we have come. Then
when the lake was drained dry, the people whereof I speak built a
mighty city on its bed, whereof naught but ruins and the name of
Kôr yet remaineth, and from age to age hewed the caves and
passages that thou wilt see.”
“It may be,” I answered; “but if so, how is it that the lake does
not fill up again with the rains and the water of the springs?”
“Nay, my son, the people were a wise people, and they left a
drain to keep it clear. Seest thou the river to the right?” and
he pointed to a fair-sized stream that wound away across the
plain, some four miles from us. “That is the drain, and it comes
out through the mountain wall where this cutting goes in. At
first, perhaps, the water ran down this canal, but afterwards the
people turned it, and used the cutting for a road.”
“And is there then no other place where one may enter into the
great mountain,” I asked, “except through that drain?”
“There is a place,” he answered, “where cattle and men on foot
may cross with much labour, but it is secret. A year mightest
thou search and shouldst never find it. It is only used once a
year, when the herds of cattle that have been fatting on the
slopes of the mountain, and on this plain, are driven into the
space within.”
“And does _She_ live there always?” I asked, “or does she come at
times without the mountain?”
“Nay, my son, where she is, there she is.”
By now we were well on to the great plain, and I was examining
with delight the varied beauty of its semi-tropical flowers and
trees, the latter of which grew singly, or at most in clumps of
three or four, much of the timber being of large size, and
belonging apparently to a variety of evergreen oak. There were
also many palms, some of them more than one hundred feet high,
and the largest and most beautiful tree ferns that I ever saw,
about which hung clouds of jewelled honeysuckers and great-winged
butterflies. Wandering about among the trees or crouching in the
long and feathered grass were all varieties of game, from
rhinoceroses down. I saw a rhinoceros, buffalo (a large herd),
eland, quagga, and sable antelope, the most beautiful of all the
bucks, not to mention many smaller varieties of game, and three
ostriches which scudded away at our approach like white drift
before a gale. So plentiful was the game that at last I could
stand it no longer. I had a single barrel sporting Martini with
me in the litter, the “Express” being too cumbersome, and espying
a beautiful fat eland rubbing himself under one of the oak-like
trees, I jumped out of the litter, and proceeded to creep as near
to him as I could. He let me come within eighty yards, and then
turned his head, and stared at me, preparatory to running away. I
lifted the rifle, and taking him about midway down the shoulder,
for he was side on to me, fired. I never made a cleaner shot or a
better kill in all my small experience, for the great buck sprang
right up into the air and fell dead. The bearers, who had all
halted to see the performance, gave a murmur of surprise, an
unwonted compliment from these sullen people, who never appear to
be surprised at anything, and a party of the guard at once ran
off to cut the animal up. As for myself, though I was longing to
have a look at him, I sauntered back to my litter as though I had
been in the habit of killing eland all my life, feeling that I
had gone up several degrees in the estimation of the Amahagger,
who looked on the whole thing as a very high-class manifestation
of witchcraft. As a matter of fact, however, I had never seen an
eland in a wild state before. Billali received me with
enthusiasm.
“It is wonderful, my son the Baboon,” he cried; “wonderful! Thou
art a very great man, though so ugly. Had I not seen, surely I
would never have believed. And thou sayest that thou wilt teach
me to slay in this fashion?”
“Certainly, my father,” I said airily; “it is nothing.”
But all the same I firmly made up my mind that when “my father”
Billali began to fire I would without fail lie down or take
refuge behind a tree.
After this little incident nothing happened of any note till
about an hour and a half before sundown, when we arrived beneath
the shadow of the towering volcanic mass that I have already
described. It is quite impossible for me to describe its grim
grandeur as it appeared to me while my patient bearers toiled
along the bed of the ancient watercourse towards the spot where
the rich brown-hued cliff shot up from precipice to precipice
till its crown lost itself in a cloud. All I can say is that it
almost awed me by the intensity of its lonesome and most solemn
greatness. On we went up the bright and sunny slope, till at last
the creeping shadows from above swallowed up its brightness, and
presently we began to pass through a cutting hewn in the living
rock. Deeper and deeper grew this marvellous work, which must, I
should say, have employed thousands of men for many years.
Indeed, how it was ever executed at all without the aid of
blasting-powder or dynamite I cannot to this day imagine. It is
and must remain one of the mysteries of that wild land. I can
only suppose that these cuttings and the vast caves that had been
hollowed out of the rocks they pierced were the State
undertakings of the people of Kôr, who lived here in the dim lost
ages of the world, and, as in the case of the Egyptian monuments,
were executed by the forced labour of tens of thousands of
captives, carried on through an indefinite number of centuries.
But who were the people?
At last we reached the face of the precipice itself, and found
ourselves looking into the mouth of a dark tunnel that forcibly
reminded me of those undertaken by our nineteenth-century
engineers in the construction of railway lines. Out of this
tunnel flowed a considerable stream of water. Indeed, though I do
not think that I have mentioned it, we had followed this stream,
which ultimately developed into the river I have already
described as winding away to the right, from the spot where the
cutting in the solid rock commenced. Half of this cutting formed
a channel for the stream, and half, which was placed on a
slightly higher level—eight feet perhaps—was devoted to the
purposes of a roadway. At the termination of the cutting,
however, the stream turned off across the plain and followed a
channel of its own. At the mouth of the cave the cavalcade was
halted, and, while the men employed themselves in lighting some
earthenware lamps they had brought with them, Billali, descending
from his litter, informed me politely but firmly that the orders
of _She_ were that we were now to be blindfolded, so that we
should not learn the secret of the paths through the bowels of
the mountains. To this I, of course, assented cheerfully enough,
but Job, who was now very much better, notwithstanding the
journey, did not like it at all, fancying, I believe, that it was
but a preliminary step to being hot-potted. He was, however, a
little consoled when I pointed out to him that there were no hot
pots at hand, and, so far as I knew, no fire to heat them in. As
for poor Leo, after turning restlessly for hours, he had, to my
deep thankfulness, at last dropped off into a sleep or stupor, I
do not know which, so there was no need to blindfold him. The
blindfolding was performed by binding a piece of the yellowish
linen whereof those of the Amahagger who condescended to wear
anything in particular made their dresses, tightly round the
eyes. This linen I afterwards discovered was taken from the
tombs, and was not, as I had at first supposed, of native
manufacture. The bandage was then knotted at the back of the
head, and finally brought down again and the ends bound under the
chin to prevent its slipping. Ustane was, by the way, also
blindfolded, I do not know why, unless it was from fear that she
should impart the secrets of the route to us.
This operation performed we started on once more, and soon, by
the echoing sound of the footsteps of the bearers and the
increased noise of the water caused by reverberation in a
confined space, I knew that we were entering into the bowels of
the great mountain. It was an eerie sensation, being borne along
into the dead heart of the rock we knew not whither, but I was
getting used to eerie sensations by this time, and by now was
pretty well prepared for anything. So I lay still, and listened
to the tramp, tramp of the bearers and the rushing of the water,
and tried to believe that I was enjoying myself. Presently the
men set up the melancholy little chant that I had heard on the
first night when we were captured in the whaleboat, and the
effect produced by their voices was very curious, and quite
indescribable. After a while the air began to get exceedingly
thick and heavy, so much so, indeed, that I felt as though I were
going to choke, till at length the litter took a sharp turn, then
another and another, and the sound of the running water ceased.
After this the air was fresher again, but the turns were
continuous, and to me, blindfolded as I was, most bewildering. I
tried to keep a map of them in my mind in case it might ever be
necessary for us to try and escape by this route, but, needless
to say, failed utterly. Another half-hour or so passed, and then
suddenly I became aware that we were once more in the open air. I
could see the light through my bandage and feel its freshness on
my face. A few more minutes and the caravan halted, and I heard
Billali order Ustane to remove her bandage and undo ours. Without
waiting for her attentions I got the knot of mine loose, and
looked out.
As I anticipated, we had passed right through the precipice, and
were now on the farther side, and immediately beneath its
beetling face. The first thing I noticed was that the cliff is
not nearly so high here, not so high I should say by five hundred
feet, which proved that the bed of the lake, or rather of the
vast ancient crater in which we stood, was much above the level
of the surrounding plain. For the rest, we found ourselves in a
huge rock-surrounded cup, not unlike that of the first place
where we had sojourned, only ten times the size. Indeed, I could
only just make out the frowning line of the opposite cliffs. A
great portion of the plain thus enclosed by nature was
cultivated, and fenced in with walls of stone placed there to
keep the cattle and goats, of which there were large herds about,
from breaking into the gardens. Here and there rose great grass
mounds, and some miles away towards the centre I thought that I
could see the outline of colossal ruins. I had no time to observe