He looked down at the white ground.  To his surprise he found that from here to the lake the valley was floored with huge skulls, skeletons, scattered bones, and tusks.  It was the elephants’ Golgotha.  He had penetrated to a spot which perhaps no other human being had ever seen—­the death-place of the mammoths, the mysterious retreat to which the elephants of the Terai came to die.

He looked instinctively towards the aged animals, which alone had gone forward among the bones.  And, as he gazed, one of them stumbled, recovered its footing, staggered on a few paces, then stopped and slowly sank to the ground.  It laid its head down and stretched out its limbs.  Tremors shook the huge body; then it lay still as though asleep.  A second old elephant, and a third, stood for a moment, then slowly subsided.  Another and another did the same; until finally all of them lay stretched out motionless—­lifeless, dark spots on the white floor that was composed of bones of countless generations of their kind.

There was a strange impressiveness about the solemn passing of these great beasts.  It affected the human spectator almost painfully.  The hush of this fatal valley, the long line of elephants watching the death of their kindred, the pathos of the end of the stately animals which in obedience to some mysterious impulse, had struggled through many difficulties only to lie down here silently, uncomplainingly, and give up their lives, all stirred Dermot strangely.  And when the thought of the incalculable wealth that lay in the vast quantity of ivory stored in this great charnel-house flashed through his mind, he felt that it would be a shameful desecration, inviting the wrath of the gods, to remove even one tusk of it.

He was not left long to gaze and wonder at the weird scene.  To his relief Badshah suddenly turned and passed through the trees again towards the tunnelled entrance, and the hundreds of other elephants followed him in file.  In a few minutes Dermot found himself plunged into darkness once more, and the Valley of Death had disappeared.

When they had passed through the tunnel, the elephants slipped and stumbled down the rock-encumbered ravines, for elephants are far less sure-footed in descent than when ascending.  But they travelled at a much faster pace, being no longer hampered by the presence of the old and decrepit beasts.  It seemed to take only a comparatively short time to reach the valley between the two mountain ranges.  And here they stopped to feed and rest.

When morning came, Dermot found that the big assembly of elephants was breaking up into separate herds of which it was composed.  The greater number of these moved off to the east and north, evidently purposing to remain for a time in Bhutan, where the young grass was springing up in the valleys as the lower snows melted.  Only three herds intended to return to India with Badshah, of which the largest, consisting of about a hundred members, seemed to be the one to which he particularly belonged.