Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 26 ALADDIN'S CAVE. In my account of the destruction of the king- cobras, I promised to relate a very strange adventure that befell me at the old diamond mines of Buwapatam. Permal led the way to the old pits, which were situated on some rising ground a little way to the east. He said there were several hundreds of these pits extending over some miles of ground, but that they were more numerous and larger just at the spot we were now visiting. Mounds of earth, probably excavated from the digging, marked the mouth of each pit. A dense, thorny vegetation grew around and overhung the entrance of the shafts and concealed it from view, so that one might easily stumble into one of these traps, or pitfalls, which, indeed, they closely resembled. Selecting one of the largest and best preserved of the pits for examination, the Chentsu's axe quickly cleared away the brushwood. A strong, light rope, which I always carry on these expeditions, was fastened to a stump, and I prepared to descend the old mine, but, before doing so, I threw in a wisp of lighted grass to test the condition of the air—a very needful precaution—and toget some idea of the depth I would have to descend. The grass kept alight at the bottom of the pit, showing the air was fit to breathe, and the depth appearing to be not more than thirty feet, I began the descent, first sticking a lighted candle to a piece of damp clay attached—miner fashion —to my cap. On arriving at the bottom, I found myself on the top of a mound of debris fallen in from the mouth of the pit. The ground sloped away on all sides, to a very considerable distance, making a very large chamber, the full extent of which I could not see, owing to the darkness, the glimmering light of my candle not extending very far. After waiting a little time, to a...