Cave of Yeermallik. (Burslem, _A peep into Toorkisthan_, 1846, chaps.
X., XI.)--In the valley of the Doaub, northwest of Kabul. The entrance
is half way up a hill, and is about 15 meters wide and 15 meters high.
This is a large cave, with many ramifications and galleries. In the
centre of a hall far within, Captain Burslem found a mass of clear ice,
smooth and polished as a mirror, and in the form of a beehive, with its
dome-shaped top just touching the long icicles which depended from the
jagged surface of the rock. A small aperture led into the interior of
this cone, whose walls were about 60 centimeters thick and which was
divided into several compartments. Some distance from the entrance of
this cave there is a perpendicular drop of 5 meters. A short distance
beyond this, in one of the halls, were hundreds of skeletons of men,
women and children, in a perfectly undisturbed state, also the prints
of a naked human foot and the distinct marks of the pointed heel of an
Afghan boot. The moollah, who was acting as guide, said the skeletons
were the remains of seven hundred men of the Huzareh tribe who took
refuge in the cave with their wives and children during the invasion of
Genghis Khan, and who defended themselves so stoutly, that after trying
in vain to smoke them out, the invader built them in with huge natural
blocks of stone, and left them to die of hunger. Some of the Afghans
said that the cave was inhabited by Sheitan, a possibility denied by
the moollah who guided Captain Burslem, on the philosophical plea that
the cave was too cold for such an inhabitant.
HIMÁLAYA.
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