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I found to be deep but narrow excavations among rugged rocks, winding about 

 according as the old miners had followed the vein and churns of ore, deepening as 

 they went, and leaving these catacomb-like passages, which in the lapse of time 

 had got covered with vegetation, and crested with beeches or the dark verdure of 

 shattered yews, making a singular and romantic appearacce. The rocks on either 

 side of these narrow gullies are nearly or quite perpendicular, and in some places a 

 shadowy gloom oppresses the explorer. In one part of this demoniacal chapel is a 

 lofty rock called the devil's pulpit, where ancient superstition supposed the enemy 

 of mankind to show his horns at certain times, and direct the operations of a crowd 

 of demons and witches there assembled. These labyrinths were certainly the toil 

 of many years, and thus abandoned are well adapted to superstitious imaginings 

 and wild ideas, especially when contemplated on a cloudy evening, or by moon- 

 light, when the gloomy winding aisles are only half revealed, and a night wind moans 

 among the flapping boughs above, the still solitude only otherwise disturbed by 

 the shrill cry of some startled ill-omened bird. (Here was shown a sketch of the 

 devil's chapel). The roots of trees run down these isolated rocks in a most re- 

 markable manner, and on a gloomy day, when the dark branches of the crested 

 trees shut out the light of heaven, a scene depicted by Hood in one of his poems 

 may be realised to an imaginative observer — 



It was a wild and solitary glen, 

 Made gloomy by vast yews with foliage dark, 

 Whose npturn'd roots like bones of buried men 

 Push'd through the rotten soil for fear's remark ; 

 A hundred horrid stems jagged and sark. 

 Struggled with twisted arms in hideous fray." 



There is an excavation of passages more open to the day at Clearvvell, called 

 the "Pleasure Rocks," resorted to for hiding among by the people around on 

 holiday times, and here I noticed, in these sheltered crannies, ferns of more luxuriant 

 growth than I ever met with elsewhere, most elegant and beautiful. Some of the 

 fronds were a yard in length. 



From Roman coins having been found in the vicinity of these excavations, 

 which occur ia several parts of the forest, and among abandoned heaps of cinders, 

 it has been inferred that the Romans when in Britain worked the mines here for the 

 iron they wanted ; but as scythes were aSixed to the war-cars of the ancient 

 Britous before the Roman invasion, it is probable that British miners already here 

 were continued to be employed by the Roman officers stationed at Glevum (now 

 Gloucester), and they would pay the workmen in Roman coin, which perhaps there 

 was some difficulty in exchanging in a rude uncultivated district, or they might 

 hide them for security. 



That the Britons, or some tribe of the Silures, had a vocation here in Druidic 

 times is evident from the pre-historic relics yet remaining within the confines of 

 the forest, the most remarkable of which is a Logan, now known as the Buck- 

 stone, a comparatively modern name given it from some hunted buck having — 

 possibly a daring leap — mounted the stone to escape its pursuers. These Logan, or 

 rocking-stones, are believed to have been used by the Druids, either for judicial or 



