well as wider and longer, making a wild little glen, studded with rocks, bushes, and trees, that terminates under a vast, marble-looking arch, the mouth of the cave. The view from this mouth, looking back to the glen, is inexpressibly grand and beautiful-a vista, or picture, one might fancy, of a waste nook of Paradise, set or framed in a grotto-work of stone. The cavern is said to continue only for about a hundred yards, when it is sudderly lost in a vast pit of unknown depth.

The keeper of the Cave Inn the story represents as a dark villain, accustomed to rob and murder all travellers rich enough to reward his trouble; for which purpose, as well as for that of concealment, the cave behind the house afforded him unusual facilities. His plan of proceedings, when he had resolved the death of a traveller, was, first, under the plea of looking after the victim's horse, before going to bed, to lead the animal from the stable into the cave, and force him into the pit; then, with an appearance of concern, to inform the traveller his beast had strayed into the cave among the rocks, whence he could not remove him without assistance; and thus obtain the latter to accompany him into the infernal den; where, arriving at the chasm, a sudden blow

or push precipitated the human victim also into the gulf, and with him all evidence of the crime by which he had perished.

This horrible story I afterwards heard repeated by other persons, some of whom declared that the innkeeper's villany had been finally brought to light by the confessions of an agonized wife, the witness, though not the accomplice, of his murders; while others thought that his guilt rested merely upon suspicion, for which the sudden disappearance of several travellers unfortunately gave too many grounds. I must confess that none of my informants were very positive in their modes of telling the story, and none able to vouch for its truth; while one cautious, or judicious, personage professed an entire disbelief in the innkeeper's guilt, hinting that the whole story had grown out of the wild prattling of a woman, the poor man's wife, who was, in the narrator's opinion, a mere unhappy lunatic. The tale, however, had currency enough to give the suspected man trouble, and he soon afterwards left the country, and was no more heard of.

But let us retrace our steps to the Vestibule; let us enter the Grand Gallery; for we

have yet much to see-or rather, we have all to see-and much to hear.

The Grand Gallery is a hundred feet wide, with an average height of forty or fifty. Its roof is, for the most part, flat and regular; its walls broken by massive buttresses, that here and there stare out of the gloom, and salute us with a rocky frown. Fancy traces among them a thousand majestic resemblances to scenes recollected, or imagined, in the external world. On the right hand, we see the Rocky Mountains-the Chippewyan in little, without the superfluous caps of snow; on the left, the Cliffs of Kentucky-excellent likenesses all, as far as crags fifty feet high, bare and desolate, and shrouded in never-ending night, can resemble cliffs of three hundred feet, adorned with trees and flowers, shining like marble in the brave sunshine, and glassing their beauty in the crystal river below. Among these Kentucky cliffs, just under the ceiling, is a gap in the wall, into which you can scramble, and make your way down a chaotic gulf, creeping like a rat under and among huge loose rocks, to a depth of eighty or ninety feet-that is, you can do all this, provided you do not break your neck before you get half way.

A hundred yards further on, the roof suddenly sinks somewhat, forming an inclined plane, on which clouds seem to float as in a midnight sky. And here Nature, who, in these same clouds, proves that she is not so good a painter below the earth as she is above, has scooped out a spacious cove on the left hand, as wide and high as the Grand Gallery into which it opens, but of little more than a hundred feet in extent. Here, among rude rocks, has been constructed a still ruder altar—a wooden desk, or pulpit; from which, while torches shone around from crag to crag, the preacher has proclaimed the word of God, and the voices of a congregation have arisen in solemn hosannas. The services of worship in such a place must have been strangely and profoundly impressive. It is a cathedral which, man feels, has been piled, not by the art of man, but by the will of his Maker. But it is a place to inculcate religious fear, rather than pious affection.

Another hundred yards beyond the Church -for so the cove of the pulpit is called-and you find yourself again among the ruins of nitre works. The spacious floor is occupied with vats filled in with earth, which is now, however, beginning to sink, giving to the

place somewhat the air of an ancient and neglected cemetery—a cemetery of Brobdignags. A tall frame-work of timbers, that once supported a forcing pump, is yet standing in the midst. Opposite to it, a ladder is seen resting against the right hand wall. Looking up, you perceive a gap in the wall fifty feet wide, and twenty high, with several huge rocks lying in it, one of them looking like a tower commanding the savage pass. This is the entrance of the Haunted Chambers.