An accident which occurred during these imperial excursions threw a damp over their merriment. In ascending the Peer Punjal, the loftiest mountain of the southern chain, from whose summit the eye commands an extensive prospect of Cashmere, one of the foremost elephants was seized with terror, occasioned, according to the Hindoos, by the length and steepness of the acclivity. This beast was one of those upon which the ladies of the harem were mounted; and fifteen others, employed in the same service, followed. The moment his courage failed him he began to reel backwards; and striking against the animal which immediately succeeded, forced him also to retreat. Thus the shock, communicated from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, in an instant threw back the whole fifteen; and being upon the giddy edge of a precipice, no exertion of their drivers or of the bystanders could check their fall; and down they rolled over the rocks into the abyss, with the ladies upon their backs. This accident threw the whole army into consternation. A general halt took place. The most adventurous immediately crept down the cliffs, and were followed by the rest, to aid such as should have escaped with life, and remove the bodies of the dead. Here, to their great astonishment, they found that, by the mercy of Providence, only three or four of the ladies had been killed; but the elephants, which, when they sink under their prodigious burdens even on a smooth road, never rise again, had all been mortally wounded by the fall, and could by no means be lifted from the spot. Even two days afterward, however, when Bernier again visited the place, he observed some of the poor animals moving their trunks.