Not far from the entrance they found a passage between two jagged rocks, possibly the remains of Genghis Khan's fatal wall, so narrow that they had some difficulty in squeezing through; and then, before long, came to a drop of 16 feet, down which they were lowered by ropes made from the cotton turbans of the Shah and his attendants.

Here they left two men to haul them up on their return, and bade farewell to the light of day.

The narrow path led by the edge of a black abyss, sometimes over a flooring of smooth ice for a few feet, and widened gradually till they reached a damp and dripping hall, of dimensions so vast that the light of their torches did not enable them to form a conception of its size.

In this hall they found hundreds of skeletons in a perfectly undisturbed state, one, for instance, still holding the skeletons of two infants in its bony arms, while some of the bodies had been preserved, and lay shrivelled like those at the Great St.Bernard.
They were very much startled here by the discovery of the prints of a naked human foot, and by its side the distinct mark of the pointed heel of an Affghan boot,[102] precisely what had so thoroughly frightened the Shah twelve years before.

The prints retained all the sharpness of outline which marks a recent impression, and led towards the farther recesses of the cave; but the Englishmen were called away from their investigation by the announcement that if they did not make haste, there would not be oil enough for lighting them to the ice-caves.
Proceeding through several low arches and smaller caves, they reached at length a vast hall, in the centre of which was[103] an enormous mass of clear ice, smooth and polished as a mirror, and in the form of a gigantic beehive, with its dome-shaped top just touching the long icicles which depended from the jagged surface of the rock.