se cavern, with an entrance
hall, or foyer, about thirty feet high and a hundred feet in length.
Along the inner edge were the crumbling remains of little mud and wattle
huts that had been occupied by people a long time before. Beyond this
great entrance hall were passages that led into other vast, echoing
caverns with domes like those of a cathedral.

Countless thousands of bats darted about us as our voices broke the
silence of ages, and in places the deposits of bats were two or three
feet deep. It staggered one's senses to think how long these creatures
had dwelt within the labyrinth of caverns and passageways.

We explored the cave for a quarter of a mile or so, stumbling, stooping,
climbing, and sliding down precipitous slopes. Far off in the darkness
sounded the steady drip, drip, drip of water, and several times our
progress was stopped by black lakes into which a tossed stone would tell
of depths that might be almost bottomless. We fired our shotguns and the
loosened dirt and rocks and the thunder of thousands of bats' wings were
enough to terrify the senses.

There is no telling how many centuries or ages these caverns have stood
as they stand to-day. Doubtless the wild tribes of the mountain have
occupied them for thousands of years, and doubtless a thousand years
from now the descendants of these tribes of people and bats will still
be there in the cisternlike caverns with the broad fan of sparkling
water spreading like a beautiful curtain across the great archway of an
entrance.

That night, after hours of climbing through great forests and across
grassy slopes gay with countless varieties of beautiful and strange
flowers, we pitched our camp on a wind-swept height eleven thousand feet
up. The peaks of the mountain rose high above us only a mile or so
farther on.

When the night fell the cold was intense, and we huddled about the
camp-fire for warmth. Around each of the porters' camp-fires the
humped-up natives crouched and dreamed of the warm valleys far below in
the darkness. I suppose the cold made them irritable, for just as we
were preparing to turn in there suddenly came a succession of screams
from one of the groups--screams of a boy in mortal terror. The sounds
breaking out so unexpectedly in the silent night were enough to freeze
the blood in one's veins. I never heard such frantic screams--like those
that might come from a torture-chamber.

One of the porters had become infuriated by one of