into the blue air, soared their twisted snow-wreaths. Beneath the
snow-line the peaks were purple with heaths, and so were the wild moors
that ran up the slopes towards them. Straight before us the white
ribbon of Solomon's Great Road stretched away uphill to the foot of the
centre peak, about five miles from us, and there stopped. It was its
terminus.

I had better leave the feelings of intense excitement with which we set
out on our march that morning to the imagination of those who read this
history. At last we were drawing near to the wonderful mines that had
been the cause of the miserable death of the old Portuguese Dom three
centuries ago, of my poor friend, his ill-starred descendant, and also,
as we feared, of George Curtis, Sir Henry's brother. Were we destined,
after all that we had gone through, to fare any better? Evil befell
them, as that old fiend Gagool said; would it also befall us? Somehow,
as we were marching up that last stretch of beautiful road, I could not
help feeling a little superstitious about the matter, and so I think
did Good and Sir Henry.

For an hour and a half or more we tramped on up the heather-fringed
way, going so fast in our excitement that the bearers of Gagool's
hammock could scarcely keep pace with us, and its occupant piped out to
us to stop.

"Walk more slowly, white men," she said, projecting her hideous
shrivelled countenance between the grass curtains, and fixing her
gleaming eyes upon us; "why will ye run to meet the evil that shall
befall you, ye seekers after treasure?" and she laughed that horrible
laugh which always sent a cold shiver down my back, and for a while
quite took the enthusiasm out of us.

However, on we went, till we saw before us, and between ourselves and
the peak, a vast circular hole with sloping sides, three hundred feet
or more in depth, and quite half a mile round.

"Can't you guess what this is?" I said to Sir Henry and Good, who were
staring in astonishment at the awful pit before us.

They shook their heads.

"Then it is clear that you have never seen the diamond diggings at
Kimberley. You may depend on it that this is Solomon's Diamond Mine.
Look there," I said, pointing to the strata of stiff blue clay which
were yet to be seen among the grass and bushes that clothed the sides
of the pit, "the formation is the same. I'll be bound that if we went
down there we should find 'pipes' of soapy brecciated rock. Look, too,"
and I pointed to