People of the Spider been burned flat?" with
a wave of the hand which took in the desolated region.

They had gained the great mountain range whose snowy summits had been
drawing nearer for days, and a noble range indeed it was apparently,
moreover, of immense altitude. Laurence Stanninghame, who was well
acquainted with the Alps, now gazed in wonder and admiration upon these
snow-capped Titans whose white heads seemed to support the blue vault of
heaven itself, to such dizzy heights did they soar. Walls of black
cliff, overhung with cornices even as with gigantic white eyebrows,
towered up from dazzling snow slope, and higher still riven crags, split
into all fantastic shapes, frowned forth as though to menace the world.
And all around, clinging about the feet of these stupendous heights,
soft, luxuriant forests, tuneful with the murmur of innumerable glacier
streams. A very Paradise of beauty and grandeur side by side, thought
Laurence--amid which the shields and spears, the marching column of the
savage host seemed strangely out of keeping.

"How are they called, those mountains, Silawayo?" he said.

"Beyond them lies the land of the People of the Spider," answered the
induna evasively. And the other understood that he must not look for
exuberant information on topographical subjects just then.

They entered the mountains by a deep, black defile which pierced the
range. For a day and night they wound through this, hardly pausing to
rest, for it had become piercingly cold. Moreover, as Silawayo
explained, even when the weather was at its highest stage of sultriness
elsewhere, in the mountains the changes were sudden and great. To be
snowed up in this pass was too serious a matter to risk.

"Was it the only gate by which the country of the Ba-gcatya was entered,
then?"

But Silawayo did not seem to hear this question. He descanted learnedly
on the suddenness of the mountain storms, and told tales of more than
one _impi_ which had set forth in all its warlike ardour, and had found
here a stiff and frozen bed whereon its people might rest for all time.

The while keenly alert to take in all the features of the route,
Laurence affected the greatest interest in the conversation of those
around him. But there was that about the dark ruggedness of this
stupendous pass that weighed heavily upon his mind--that depressed,
well-nigh appalled him. It was as though he were passing through some
black and gloomy gate which sh