from ledge to ledge, smashing
themselves into a thousand fragments, till the echoes so often
repeated were like the independent file-firing of a battalion of
infantry. Sometimes the narrow path would be covered for a distance of
many feet with a smooth coat of ice, and then it was indeed dangerous.
After moving on in this way for some minutes, the road gradually
widened till we found ourselves on the damp and dripping flooring of a
chamber of unknown dimensions; the torch light was not strong enough
to enable us to conceive the size of this subterraneous hall, but all
around us lay scattered melancholy proofs that there was some sad
foundation for the moollah's story. Hundreds of human skeletons were
strewed around; as far as the eye could penetrate these mournful
relics presented themselves; they were very perfect, and had evidently
not been disturbed since death; some had more the appearance of the
shrivelled-up remains which we find in the Morgue on the road to
the Grand St. Bernard, and lay about us in all the varied positions
induced by their miserable fate. Here, it seemed that a group had,
while sufficient strength yet remained, huddled themselves together,
as if to keep up the vital warmth of which death so slowly and yet
so surely was depriving them; a little farther on was a figure in a
sitting posture, with two infants still clasped in its bony arms;
and then again the eye would fall upon some solitary figure with
outstretched limbs, as if courting that death which on the instant
responded to the call. Involuntarily my thoughts recurred to Dante's
beautiful description of the Comte Ugolino's children and their
piteous end in the Torre della Fame--but here, a sickening sense of
the dreadful reality of the horrors, which it was evident from these
mute memorials of man's cruelty to his fellow had been endured, quite
oppressed me, and I wished I had never visited the spot. I felt myself
so much harrowed by this sad scene, that I endeavoured to distract
my attention; but what was my astonishment when my eye fell upon the
print of a human naked foot, and beside it the distinct mark of the
pointed heel of the Affgh[=a]n boot!--I hope my reader will give me
credit for truth--I can assure him that it was some time before I
could believe my own eyes, though I considered that the result of our
explorations would explain in part the sight, which appeared to me
so extraordinary, and which tallied so strangely with the foot