The Ants Were As Rampant As Ever, And I Passed Another Night In Walking Up And Down The Glen.

Towards midnight the horses came again for water, but would not return, preferring to remain till morning rather than risk a passage down in the dark.

I went right up to the top of the mountain, and got an hour's peace before the sun rose. In the morning all the horses' legs were puffed and swelled, and they were frightened to move from the water. I had great trouble in getting them down at all. It was impossible to ride them away, and here we had to remain for another day, in this Inferno. Not Dante's, gelid lowest circle of Hell, or city of Dis, could cause more anguish, to a forced resident within its bounds, than did this frightful place to me. Even though Moses did omit to inflict ants on Pharaoh, it is a wonder Dante never thought to have a region of them full of wicked wretches, eternally tortured with their bites, and stings, and smells. Dante certainly was good at imagining horrors. But imagination can't conceive the horror of a region swarming with ants and then Dante never lived in an ant country, and had no conception what torture such creatures can inflict. The smaller they are the more terrible. My only consolation here was my marble bath, which the horses had polluted; within its cool and shady depths I could alone find respite from my tormentors. Oh, how earnestly did I wish that its waters were the waters of oblivion, or that I could quaff some kind nepenthe, which would make me oblivious of my woes, for the persistent attacks of the ants unceasingly continued

"From night till morn, from morn till dewy eve."

Here of course we had no dewy eve. Only one slight source of pleasure at length occurred to me, and that was, that Jimmy began to shift about a bit at last. On the 26th, with what delight I departed from this odious gorge after another night of restlessness, agony, and misery, may perhaps be imagined, though of course I was indebted to the glen for water, and unless we actually give up our lives, we cannot give up that. There was a good deal of water in this bath, as may be supposed when horses could swim about in it. I called it Edith's Marble Bath, after my niece, having named Glen Edith also after her on my former expedition. The stone here is not actually marble, though very like it. I saw no limestone in this range; the only approach to it is in the limestone formation in the bed of the ancient Lake Christopher, mentioned as lying to the west of the Rawlinson Range. The stone here was a kind of milky quartz. We kept away as much as possible off the rough slopes of the range, and got to Glen Helen at night, but old Buggs knocked up, and we had to lead, beat, and drive him on foot, so that it was very late before we got to the glen.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 196 of 394
Words from 101325 to 101847 of 204780