book with the description of them, but to do so would only be to repeat
what I have said, with variations.

Nearly all the bodies, so masterfully was the art with which they had
been treated, were as perfect as on the day of death thousands of years
before. Nothing came to injure them in the deep silence of the living
rock: they were beyond the reach of heat and cold and damp, and the
aromatic drugs with which they had been saturated were evidently
practically everlasting in their effect. Here and there, however, we saw
an exception, and in these cases, although the flesh looked sound enough
externally, if one touched it it fell in, and revealed the fact that the
figure was but a pile of dust. This arose, Ayesha told me, from these
particular bodies having, either owing to haste in the burial or
other causes, been soaked in the preservative,[*] instead of its being
injected into the substance of the flesh.

[*] Ayesha afterwards showed me the tree from the leaves of
which this ancient preservative was manufactured. It is a
low bush-like tree, that to this day grows in wonderful
plenty upon the sides of the mountains, or rather upon the
slopes leading up to the rocky walls. The leaves are long
and narrow, a vivid green in colour, but turning a bright
red in the autumn, and not unlike those of a laurel in
general appearance. They have little smell when green, but
if boiled the aromatic odour from them is so strong that one
can hardly bear it. The best mixture, however, was made from
the roots, and among the people of Kôr there was a law,
which Ayesha showed me alluded to on some of the
inscriptions, to the effect that on pain of heavy penalties
no one under a certain rank was to be embalmed with the