fungoid
vegetation which grew rapidly, fertilized by bodies of men and animals,
extended over the valley, obliterating the ancient roads, creeping up
the ruins, and choking the beds of the streams which, their irrigating
ditches broken, scattered their waters until the low fields were
converted into ponds.

It was the devastating work of a continually swelling army composed of a
hundred and eighty thousand men and of many thousands of horses. In a
short time they had devoured the Saguntine domain. The soldiers after
destroying all that was not of immediate use, extended their rapacity to
surrounding zones, constantly broadening their radius of destruction as
the siege was prolonged.

Supplies now came from a distance of many days' journey; sent by remote
tribes in the hope of a reward of booty which Hannibal knew how to
instill into their minds, telling them of the riches of Saguntum. The
elephants had been sent to New Carthage some months before, as they were
useless in the siege and difficult to maintain in this devastated
region.

Over the domain flew crows in undulating black clouds. From the thicket
rose the stench of rotting horses and mules. By the roadsides, their
members pinned to the ground by rocks, lay the bodies of barbarians put
to death because of hopeless wounds, and whose bodies their compatriots,
according to the customs of their race, left abandoned to the birds of
prey. The immense agglomeration had vitiated the atmosphere of the
valley. They lived in the open, and yet, the filth of the multitude, and
the vapors of death, seemed disseminated between the mountains and the
sea as a heavy atmosphere replete with sickness and death.

Actaeon, coming from a distance, was the more sensitive to this stench of
the camp, and he thought of the beleaguered people with sadness. Looking
toward the city he guessed the horrors hidden behind those reddish walls
after a resistance of seven months.

They approached the camp. The Greek saw that this concentration of
military forces had assumed the aspect of a permanent city. Few tents of
canvas or of skins were left. The winter, which now was drawing to a
close, had compelled the besiegers to construct stone huts with thatched
roofs, and wooden houses which looked like towers and served as supports
to the earthworks thrown up roundabout the camp.

Hannibal, as if reading Actaeon's thought, smiled savagely while his eyes
swept the work of destruction wrought by h