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We mingled with the throng, and walked up the enormous and, indeed,
almost interminable cave. All the way its walls were elaborately
sculptured, and every twenty paces or so passages opened out of it at
right angles, leading, Billali told me, to tombs, hollowed in the rock
by "the people who were before." Nobody visited those tombs now, he
said; and I must say that my heart rejoiced when I thought of the
opportunities of antiquarian research which opened out before me.
At last we came to the head of the cave, where there was a rock dais
almost exactly similar to the one on which we had been so furiously
attacked, a fact that proved to me that these dais must have been used
as altars, probably for the celebration of religious ceremonies, and
more especially of rites connected with the interment of the dead. On
either side of this dais were passages leading, Billali informed me, to
other caves full of dead bodies. "Indeed," he added, "the whole mountain
is full of dead, and nearly all of them are perfect.


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