Half-way up, we saw the poor horse we had left
sick the day before, lying dead, with dry foam all round his mouth,
and half his skin taken off by some passing Basutu. A couple of hundred
yards farther on we found another dying, left by the party who had
started before us. It was in truth a valley of the shadow of death.
Luckily our horses lasted us back to the fort, but one died there, and
the other two are dead since.
Beautiful as was the scene by day, in the light of the full moon it was
yet more surpassingly lovely. It was solemn, weird. Every valley became
a mysterious deep, and every hill, stone, and tree shone with that cold
pale lustre which the moon alone can throw. Silence reigned, the silence
of the dead, broken only once or twice by the wild whistling challenge
of one of Secocoeni's warriors as he came bounding down the rocks,
to see who we were that passed. The effect of the fires by the huts,
perched among the rocks at the entrance to the pass, was very strange
and beautiful, reminding one of the midnight fires of the Gnomes in the
fairy tales.
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