Note 25 — Chapter XXVIII

I have said, at a venture, that we descended more than a hundred feet into the chasm before we fairly landed on the bodies of the animals. The chasm itself could not have been less than two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet deep at the part that we plunged down. This will give the reader some idea of the vast quantity of bodies of animals, chiefly buffaloes, which were there piled up. I consider that this pile must have been formed wholly from the foremost of the mass, and that when formed, it broke the fall of the others, who followed them, as it did our own: indeed, the summit of the heap was pounded into a sort of jelly.