Those, however, thus utilized are comparatively few in number; I believe many to be unknown even to the natives, while others are invested by them with a mysterious character, and their dimensions are probably exaggerated. I have received accounts of some, which I hope to visit, which are said to extend beyond any known exploration, of others which bear traces of carving and inscriptions, but nothing can be more uncertain or unsatisfactory than native accounts upon all matters where definite information is required. I have tried exploring with guides and exploring alone, and have been almost as successful one way as the other.
One of my first visits was to a ruin which I had observed crowning a summit of the range, but which was only visible from certain points, so shut in was it by the intervening mountain-tops. I started on horseback, determined to find my way alone, and struck into a valley where the narrow path followed a ledge of limestone rock, often not more than two feet wide. I soon found myself diving into a sombre gorge, the precipitous sides of which rose abruptly from the bed of the winter torrent. As I proceeded it became more and more uncanny; the path was so narrow I could no longer venture to risk my horse's footing, as a slip would have involved a fall of at least two hundred feet. My ruin disappeared, and my gorge seemed to trend away from it, the sun sank behind the range, and the deep gloom of the solitary valley, hemmed in on all sides by terraces of limestone, with here and there a fissure indicating some cavernous recess, was becoming depressing.
I tried to turn, but the ledge was too narrow, so I was obliged to creep cautiously on in the wrong direction. I began now rather to fear lest I should meet some one, not merely because passing would have been impossible, but because the spot was eminently well calculated for an act of violence, and, while I always go about unarmed, I find that my neighbours seldom go out riding alone without carrying revolvers. The aspect of a wild-looking Arab, with a gun slung behind him, suddenly turning a corner and coming straight towards me, was, under these circumstances, not reassuring. Fortunately, at the moment I saw him I had reached a spot where a huge rock had been displaced, and had left a vacant space large enough to enable me to turn comfortably, and I retraced my steps, amply repaid for my failure in not reaching the ruin, by the solemn grandeur of the part of the mountain into which I had been penetrating, and by finding my Arab, when he overtook me, to be a communicative and harmless individual, who was on his way home from a cave in which he stored his grain, and which he assured me I should have reached if I had continued a few hundred yards farther. Beyond this, he said, the path led nowhere.