Just where the animal was knocked down and
killed, it was stripped of its hide and the carcass cut up, a portion
of the flesh and the fat being removed and all the rest left on the
ground to be devoured by the pariah dogs, the carrion hawks, and a
multitude of screaming black-headed gulls always in attendance. The
blood so abundantly shed from day to day, mixing with the dust, had
formed a crust half a foot thick all over the open space: let the
reader try to imagine the smell of this crust and of tons of offal and
flesh and bones lying everywhere in heaps. But no, it cannot be
imagined. 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.
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