estination, and the treatment
that they might expect to receive upon their arrival, the man at once
shut up like a trap, and thenceforward for the remainder of the journey
refused to hold any communication whatever with his prisoners.

Their route lay in the direction of a range of distant hills, which they
judged it was the intention of their captor to cross; and as they went
they found the country gradually changing its character by subtle
gradations, growing ever more fertile and more highly cultivated with
every mile of progress, while the houses increased in number and
clustered more thickly together. At length, after passing through one
of these hamlets, they emerged upon a narrow field path, which widened
somewhat when the next hamlet was passed, and so gradually became a more
prominent feature until ultimately it developed into a full-blown road,
which, rough and uneven at first, steadily improved in appearance and
quality until it became a very excellent and much-used thoroughfare,
shaded by trees on either hand. In short the country, which on its
extreme frontier was a perfect wilderness, steadily improved with every
mile of progress toward its interior, as regarded the evidences of a
high state of civilisation. One of the strangest things, however, which
came under the notice of the Englishmen was that, from the moment of
their arrest, the inhabitants--whom they encountered in ever-increasing
numbers as the day wore on--manifested the most absolute indifference
with regard to them, not even deigning to cast a second glance upon what
was clearly a most novel and unusual sight in that country.

At sunset the party encamped at the foot of the hills toward which they
had been journeying all day, and which proved to be much more lofty, and
at a much greater distance, than they had imagined them to be when they
were first sighted; and the whole of the next day was consumed in
climbing, by means of an excellent road, to the summit of a pass where,
having safely negotiated a short length of exceedingly narrow and
difficult roadway between two enormous vertical cliffs, they emerged
upon a small plateau of rich grassland that afforded good camping ground
for the night.

The spot where the travellers outspanned was the bottom of a miniature
basin of some five or six acres in extent, and was surrounded on all
sides by steep slopes terminating in a series of jagged peaks, some four
or five hundred feet high, that bou