t protection--were accustomed to disperse in the evening, and
descend to regions where they could find shelter and repose, and to
return and renew their watch in the morning. When Hannibal learned
this, he determined to anticipate them in getting up upon the rocks
the next day, and, in order to prevent their entertaining any
suspicion of his design, he pretended to be making all the
arrangements for encamping for the night on the ground he had taken.
He accordingly pitched more tents, and built, toward evening, a great
many fires, and he began some preparations indicating that it was his
intention the next day to force his way through the pass. He moved
forward a strong detachment up to a point near the entrance to the
pass, and put them in a fortified position there, as if to have them
all ready to advance when the proper time should arrive on the
following day.

The mountaineers, seeing all these preparations going on, looked
forward to a conflict on the morrow, and, during the night, left their
positions as usual, to descend to places of shelter. The next morning,
however, when they began, at an early hour, to ascend to them again,
they were astonished to find all the lofty rocks, and cliffs, and
shelving projections which overhung the pass, covered with
Carthaginians. Hannibal had aroused a strong body of his men at the
earliest dawn, and led them up, by steep climbing, to the places which
the mountaineers had left, so as to be there before them. The
mountaineers paused, astonished, at this spectacle, and their
disappointment and rage were much increased on looking down into the
valley below, and seeing there the remainder of the Carthaginian army
quietly moving through the pass in a long train, safe apparently from
any molestation, since friends, and not enemies, were now in
possession of the cliffs above.

The mountaineers could not restrain their feelings of vexation and
anger, but immediately rushed down the declivities which they had in
part ascended, and attacked the army in the defile. An awful scene of
struggle and confusion ensued. Some were killed by weapons or by rocks
rolled down upon them. Others, contending together, and struggling
desperately in places of very narrow foothold, tumbled headlong down
the rugged rocks into the torrent below; and horses, laden with
baggage and stores, became frightened and unmanageable, and crowded
each other over the most frightful precipices. Hannibal, who was
above,