WESTERN VIEWS.

NO. I.-CAVE IN THE ROCK, ON THE OHIO.

In our last we announced that a series of Southern [ nearly as wide. This room has an aperture in the and Western Views, engraved in most elegant style, would appear in the present volume of Graham's Magazine. The beautiful scenery of the West and South has been shamefully neglected by sketchers and tourists, while every nook of rural beauty to be found in the East has been taken, and sent forth belauded in gilt-edged quartos. We purpose in "Graham" to distribute our favors, and by engraving remarkable places in every part of the country, to give a National rather than a sectional interest to the Magazine. We commence with a spot well known to travelers on the Western waters, "Cave in Rock," on the Ohio.

This remarkable natural curiositiy is situated on the Ohio river, a few miles below Shawneetown, Illinois. The approach to it, as you descend the stream, is picturesque. Bold bluffs running out into the current, diversified here and there with green valleys opening between, afford a constantly varying scene of rock, meadow and woodland. Above and below the cave are high precipices of lime-stone, principally covered with cedars. The scenery still retains much of the wild aspect it wore before civilization had intruded on it, and when nothing broke the silence of the traveler's voyage except the dip of his oars, the scream of the eagle, or the whoop of the hostile

savage.

The entrance to the cave is nearly semi-circular, and is on a level with the river when the latter is high. The passage is about twenty feet in altitude, and, a few yards from the mouth, leads into a spacious apartment, one hundred and twenty feet long, and

centre of the roof, not unlike the funnel of a chimney, which is said to lead to an upper chamber, beautifully adorned with lime-stone formations resembling the fantastic carvings of a Gothic cathedral. At one end of the cave is an opening that leads to a deep vault extending far into the heart of the rock. If a stone is cast into this abyss, its reverberations are not returned for several seconds. The English traveler, Ash, who visited the cave several years ago, asserts that he lost himself in it, on which occasion he fired a pistol which exploded with a noise like thunder; but the marvels which he tells have very properly thrown a discredit on his general veracity, without winning credit for his extravagant stories. We are, therefore, inclined to doubt his statement, that he found the bones of more than one human skeleton scattered about the floor.

Toward the close of the last century this cave was infested by a band of robbers, commanded by one Mason, whose depredations are yet borne in mind by the veterans of that region. The voyage down the Ohio was then performed in arks, which, moving lazily with the current, occupied weeks in the distance that now requires but days. There was little to relieve the monotony of this dull progress; while the slow pace at which the arks moved ensured their capture by the canoes of Indians or robbers. Mason availed himself of this, and plundered and often murdered the unwary travelers. At length, however, in 1797, the gang was broken up. The cave is admirably fitted for a bandit's retreat.