sand with steeply graded sand walls about thirty-five feet high.
(The slope, I fancy, must have been about 65 degrees.) This crater
enclosed a level piece of ground about fifty yards long by thirty at
its broadest part, with a crude well in the centre. Round the bottom
of the crater, about three feet from the level of the ground proper,
ran a series of eighty-three semi-circular ovoid, square, and
multilateral holes, all about three feet at the mouth. Each hole on
inspection showed that it was carefully shored internally with
drift-wood and bamboos, and over the mouth a wooden drip-board
projected, like the peak of a jockey's cap, for two feet. No sign of
life was visible in these tunnels, but a most sickening stench
pervaded the entire amphitheatre--a stench fouler than any which
my wanderings in Indian villages have introduced me to.

Having remounted Pornic, who was as anxious as I to get back to
camp, I rode round the base of the horseshoe to find some place
whence an exit would be practicable. The inhabitants, whoever
they might be, had not thought fit to put in an appearance, so I was
left to my own devices. My first attempt to "rush" Pornic up the
steep sand-banks showed me that I had fallen into a trap exactly on
the same model as that which the ant-lion sets for its prey. At each
step the shifting sand poured down from above in tons, and rattled
on the drip-boards of the holes like small shot. A couple of
ineffectual charges sent us both rolling down to the bottom, half
choked with the torrents of sand; and I was constrained to turn my
attention to the river-bank.

Here everything seemed easy enough. The sand hills ran down to
the river edge, it is true, but there were plenty of shoals and
shallows across which I could gallop Pornic, and find my way back