A legend avers that it is haunted by monsters having the bodies of men and heads of beasts and birds.

Surrounded by these apparitions, who lick his face and hands till he is unconscious, the traveller is carried away--where, history does not state--never to return.
If the first day's work had been hard, it was child's play compared to the second.

The track, leading over a vast plain, had recently been traversed by a number of camel caravans, which had transformed it into a kind of Jacob's ladder formed by holes a couple of feet deep in the snow.

As long as the horses trod into them all went well, but a few inches to the right or left generally brought them blundering on to their noses.

The reader may imagine what a day of this work means.