The most dreadful scenes, the worst in Dante's _Inferno_,
for example, can be visualized by the inner eye; and sounds, too, are
conveyed to us in a description so that they can be heard mentally;
but it is not so with smells.
The reader can only take my word for it
that this smell was probably the worst ever known on the earth, unless
he accepts as true the story of Tobit and the "fishy fumes" by means
of which that ancient hero defended himself in his retreat from the
pursuing devil.
It was the smell of carrion, of putrifying flesh, and of that old and
ever-newly moistened crust of dust and coagulated blood. It was, or
seemed, a curiously substantial and stationary smell; travellers
approaching or leaving the capital by the great south road, which
skirted the killing-grounds, would hold their noses and ride a mile or
so at a furious gallop until they got out of the abominable stench.
One extraordinary feature of the private _quintas_ or orchards and
plantations in the vicinity of the Saladeros was the walls or hedges.
These were built entirely of cows' skulls, seven, eight, or nine deep,
placed evenly like stones, the horns projecting. Hundreds of thousands
of skulls had been thus used, and some of the old, very long walls,
crowned with green grass and with creepers and wild flowers growing
from the cavities in the bones, had a strangely picturesque but
somewhat uncanny appearance.
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