I rested for a little while, and then advanced over very rough ground, until I reached the lower end of the glacier.  Then I saw another glacier, descending from the eastern side into a small lake.  I passed along the western side of the lake, where the ground was easier, and when I had got about half way I expected that I should see the plains which I had already seen from the opposite mountains; but it was not to be so, for the clouds rolled up to the very summit of the pass, though they did not overlip it on to the side from which I had come.  I therefore soon found myself enshrouded by a cold thin vapour, which prevented my seeing more than a very few yards in front of me.  Then I came upon a large patch of old snow, in which I could distinctly trace the half-melted tracks of goats—­and in one place, as it seemed to me, there had been a dog following them.  Had I lighted upon a land of shepherds?  The ground, where not covered with snow, was so poor and stony, and there was so little herbage, that I could see no sign of a path or regular sheep-track.  But I could not help feeling rather uneasy as I wondered what sort of a reception I might meet with if I were to come suddenly upon inhabitants.  I was thinking of this, and proceeding cautiously through the mist, when I began to fancy that I saw some objects darker than the cloud looming in front of me.  A few steps brought me nearer, and a shudder of unutterable horror ran through me when I saw a circle of gigantic forms, many times higher than myself, upstanding grim and grey through the veil of cloud before me.

I suppose I must have fainted, for I found myself some time afterwards sitting upon the ground, sick and deadly cold.  There were the figures, quite still and silent, seen vaguely through the thick gloom, but in human shape indisputably.

A sudden thought occurred to me, which would have doubtless struck me at once had I not been prepossessed with forebodings at the time that I first saw the figures, and had not the cloud concealed them from me—­I mean that they were not living beings, but statues.  I determined that I would count fifty slowly, and was sure that the objects were not alive if during that time I could detect no sign of motion.

How thankful was I when I came to the end of my fifty and there had been no movement!

I counted a second time—­but again all was still.

I then advanced timidly forward, and in another moment I saw that my surmise was correct.  I had come upon a sort of Stonehenge of rude and barbaric figures, seated as Chowbok had sat when I questioned him in the wool-shed, and with the same superhumanly malevolent expression upon their faces.  They had been all seated, but two had fallen.  They were barbarous—­neither Egyptian, nor Assyrian, nor Japanese—­different from any of these, and yet akin to all.  They were six or seven times larger than life, of great antiquity, worn and lichen grown.  They were ten