All I can say is
that it almost awed me by the intensity of its lonesome and most solemn
greatness. On we went up the bright and sunny slope, till at last the
creeping shadows from above swallowed up its brightness, and presently
we began to pass through a cutting hewn in the living rock. Deeper
and deeper grew this marvellous work, which must, I should say, have
employed thousands of men for many years. Indeed, how it was ever
executed at all without the aid of blasting-powder or dynamite I cannot
to this day imagine. It is and must remain one of the mysteries of that
wild land. I can only suppose that these cuttings and the vast caves
that had been hollowed out of the rocks they pierced were the State
undertakings of the people of Kor, who lived here in the dim lost
ages of the world, and, as in the case of the Egyptian monuments, were
executed by the forced labour of tens of thousands of captives, carried
on through an indefinite number of centuries. But who were the people?
At last we reached the face of the precipice itself, and found ourselves
looking into the mouth of a dark tunnel that forcibly reminded me of
those undertaken by our nineteenth-century engineers in the construction
of railway lines.
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