s Great Road?" he said.

I nodded, for I was still gazing out over the far country.

"Well, look; there it is!" and he pointed a little to our right.

Good and I looked accordingly, and there, winding away towards the
plain, was what appeared to be a wide turnpike road. We had not seen it
at first because, on reaching the plain, it turned behind some broken
country. We did not say anything, at least, not much; we were beginning
to lose the sense of wonder. Somehow it did not seem particularly
unnatural that we should find a sort of Roman road in this strange
land. We accepted the fact, that was all.

"Well," said Good, "it must be quite near us if we cut off to the
right. Hadn't we better be making a start?"

This was sound advice, and so soon as we had washed our faces and hands
in the stream we acted on it. For a mile or more we made our way over
boulders and across patches of snow, till suddenly, on reaching the top
of the little rise, we found the road at our feet. It was a splendid
road cut out of the solid rock, at least fifty feet wide, and
apparently well kept; though the odd thing was that it seemed to begin
there. We walked down and stood on it, but one single hundred paces
behind us, in the direction of Sheba's Breasts, it vanished, the entire
surface of the mountain being strewn with boulders interspersed with
patches of snow.

"What do you make of this, Quatermain?" asked Sir Henry.

I shook my head, I could make nothing of the thing.

"I have it!" said Good; "the road no doubt ran right over the range and
across the desert on the other side, but the sand there has covered it
up, and above us it has been obliterated by some volcanic eruption of
molten lava."

This seemed a good suggestion; at any rate, we accepted it, and
proceeded down the mountain. It proved a very different business
travelling along down hill on that magnificent pathway with full
stomachs from what it was travelling uphill over the snow quite starved
and almost frozen. Indeed, had it not been for melancholy recollections
of poor Ventvoegel's sad fate, and of that grim cave where he kept
company with the old Dom, we should have felt positively cheerful,
notwithstanding the sense of unknown dangers before us. Every mile we
walked the atmosphere grew softer and balmier, and the country before
us shone with a yet more luminous beauty. As for the road itself, I
never saw such an engineering work, though Sir Henry said that the
grea