age down in the dark.

I went right up to the top of the mountain, and got an hour's peace
before the sun rose. In the morning all the horses' legs were puffed
and swelled, and they were frightened to move from the water. I had
great trouble in getting them down at all. It was impossible to ride
them away, and here we had to remain for another day, in this Inferno.
Not Dante's, gelid lowest circle of Hell, or city of Dis, could cause
more anguish, to a forced resident within its bounds, than did this
frightful place to me. Even though Moses did omit to inflict ants on
Pharaoh, it is a wonder Dante never thought to have a region of them
full of wicked wretches, eternally tortured with their bites, and
stings, and smells. Dante certainly was good at imagining horrors. But
imagination can't conceive the horror of a region swarming with ants
and then Dante never lived in an ant country, and had no conception
what torture such creatures can inflict. The smaller they are the more
terrible. My only consolation here was my marble bath, which the
horses had polluted; within its cool and shady depths I could alone
find respite from my tormentors. Oh, how earnestly did I wish that its
waters were the waters of oblivion, or that I could quaff some kind
nepenthe, which would make me oblivious of my woes, for the persistent
attacks of the ants unceasingly continued

"From night till morn, from morn till dewy eve."

Here of course we had no dewy eve. Only one slight source of pleasure
at length occurred to me, and that was, that Jimmy began to shift
about a bit at last. On the 26th, with what delight I departed from
this odious gorge after another night of restlessness, agony, and
misery, may perhaps be imagined, though of course I was indebted to
the glen for water, and unless we actually give up our lives, we
cannot give up that. There was a good deal of water in this bath, as
may be supposed when horses could swim about in it. I called it
Edith's Marble Bath, after my niece, having named Glen Edith also
after her on my former expedition. The stone here is not actually
marble, though very like it. I saw no limestone in this range; the
only approach to it is in the limestone formation in the bed of the
ancient Lake Christopher, mentioned as lying to the west of the
Rawlinson Range. The stone here was a kind of milky quartz. We kept
away as much as possible off the rough slopes of the range, and got to
Glen Helen at night, but old