by precipitous walls of rock rising straight
and sheer for a couple of thousand feet. Above these cliffs towered giant
mountain peaks covered with snow and ice.

At the end of the valley farthest from them was a small lake. Near the
mouth of the tunnel the earth was clothed with long grass and flowering
bushes and dotted with low trees. But elsewhere the ground was dazzlingly
white, as though the snow lay deep upon it. Badshah halted among the trees,
and the old elephants passed him and went on in the direction of the lake.
Dermot noticed that they seemed to have suddenly grown feebler and more
decrepit.

He looked down at the white ground. To his surprise he found that from here
to the lake the valley was floored with huge skulls, skeletons, scattered
bones, and tusks. It was the elephants' Golgotha. He had penetrated to a
spot which perhaps no other human being had ever seen--the death-place of
the mammoths, the mysterious retreat to which the elephants of the Terai
came to die.

He looked instinctively towards the aged animals, which alone had
gone forward among the bones. And, as he gazed, one of them stumbled,
recovered its footing, staggered on a few paces, then stopped and slowly
sank to the ground. It laid its head down and stretched out its limbs.
Tremors shook the huge body; then it lay still as though asleep.
A second old elephant, and a third, stood for a moment, then slowly
subsided. Another and another did the same; until finally all of them
lay stretched out motionless--lifeless, dark spots on the white floor
that was composed of bones of countless generations of their kind.

There was a strange impressiveness about the solemn passing of these great
beasts. It affected the human spectator almost painfully. The hush of this
fatal valley, the long line of elephants watching the death of their
kindred, the pathos of the end of the stately animals which in obedience to
some mysterious impulse, had struggled through many difficulties only to
lie down here silently, uncomplainingly, and give up their lives, all
stirred Dermot strangely. And when the thought of the incalculable wealth
that lay in the vast quantity of ivory stored in this great charnel-house
flashed through his mind, he felt that it would be a shameful desecration,
inviting the wrath of the gods, to remove even one tusk of it.

He was not left long to gaze and wonder at the weird scene. To his relief
Badshah suddenly turned and passed through