My guide and I mounted and rode on.
Presently we turned down a track toward the Dead Sea, riding among huge shadows cast by the hills on our right hand.

The little jackals they call foxes crossed our path at intervals.
Owls the size of a robin, only vastly fluffier, screamed from the rocks as we passed them.

Otherwise, it was like a soul's last journey, eerie, lonely and awful, down toward River Styx.
Long before we caught sight of the water again, through a ragged gap between high limestone rocks, I could smell a village.

The guide approached it cautiously, stopping every minute or so to listen.

When we came on it at last it was down below us in abysmal darkness, one light shining through a window two feet square in proof we were not hesitating on the verge of the infinite pit.
The donkeys knew the way.