As we approached the base the ledges became more frequent, and hastening in my downward climb I at last experienced gratification at finding the peril past, and myself standing at the foot of the great precipice.
"Well?" asked Omar, approaching me quickly. "How did you fare?"
"Badly," I answered with a smile. "A dozen times I gave myself up for lost."
"Care and courage may accomplish everything," he said, laughing. "Few, however, would care to risk the perils of the Thousand Steps without a guide, or even if they did, and succeeded in accomplishing the journey to this point, they could not enter our land."
He turned towards the flat, bare face of overhanging rock opposite, and gazing up to its towering summit, answered:
"Because our land lies yonder. We must, after resting, ascend."
"How?" I inquired, noticing that the wall of the great cliff was perfectly smooth.
"Be patient, and you shall see. Only friends can enter Mo; an enemy never."
At that moment Kona desired to consult him regarding our camping arrangements, and turning I left them and wandered a little way along the valley. Presently, although its fertility was pleasant, I noticed that the air had a strange foetid odour, and, shortly afterwards, while walking in the long rank grass my feet struck against something, which, on examination, I found to be the decomposing body of a man. He wore a burnouse, and from the long-barrelled musket that lay by his side I concluded it was an Arab. As I went forward I discovered bodies scattered in twos and threes over the grass-plain. Great grey vultures were tearing the rotting flesh from the bones, feasting upon the carrion. Broken guns, bent swords and blunted daggers lay about in profusion, while the further I went, the more numerous became the hideous bodies which the long grass seemed to be striving to hide. This was assuredly the battle-field whereon the army of the Great White Queen had defeated the expedition sent by Samory. Truly the slaughter must have been appalling, and little wonder was it that the survivors whom we had met and annihilated should have fought so desperately for their lives.
Judging from the great pile of corpses, the stand made by Samory's Arabs must have been a dogged and stubborn one, for traces of a most desperate battle were everywhere apparent, yet their defeat must have been crushing and complete, for hundreds of the invaders had apparently been mowed down where they had stood. Others had fallen in hand-to-hand encounters, their limbs slashed and disabled by keener swords than their own, while many seemed literally riddled by bullets which could never have been fired by ordinary guns, or if so, at such close quarters that in nearly every case the balls had passed clean through their bodies.