BLACK ART 257 



rewarded, and beneath a great granite rock, which on three 

 previous excursions had been overlooked, the paintings were 

 discovered. In their execution the artist must have lain on 

 his back, for the " cave " does not permit one to sit upright 

 in it, except towards the wide and expansive front, and the 

 subjects are on the ceiling, which is fairly flat. The floor, 

 thick with a fine brown dust mingled with shining specks of 

 decomposed granite, and dimpled with hundreds of pitfalls 

 of the ant-lion, slopes upward. It is cool, and a dry, secure 

 spot. Not even the torrential rains of many decades of wet 

 seasons have damped the floor. One feels as though he 

 were disturbing the dust of ages ; when sitting back to 

 admire the decorated ceiling, he necessarily imprints patterns 

 which are the replicas of those made by flesh and bone long 

 since numbered among the anonymous dead. 



The sea laves the hot rocks 600 feet below, and booms 

 and gobbles in the cool crevices ; but up here the outlook 

 is obscured by rocks and giant trees, and an artistic soul, 

 longing for some method of expression, might serenely 

 gratify itself in accordance with its lights crude though 

 they were. Here, at the entrance, lie a couple of charred 

 sticks, significant of the last fire of the artist, which smoul- 

 dered out perhaps half a century ago. On the very door- 

 step is a disc of pearl-shell, the discarded beginning of a 

 fish-hook. These relics give to the scene a pathetic interest. 

 As I looked at them ponderingly, a frog far in the back of 

 the cave gave a discordant, echoing croak, which started 

 the sulky and suspicious black boy who attended me into 

 an abrupt exclamation of semi-fright ; while a scrub fowl, 

 scratching for its living overhead, dislodged a chip of granite 

 which went clicking down the rocks. "Tom," at the 

 instant, felt that the spirit of the departed was manifesting, 

 in the hollow tones of a frog and the activity of a bird, 

 resentment at the intrusion of his haunts, and was warning 

 us to begone. But we had come far on a toilsome errand, 

 and were not to be scared away by trifles, though a transient 

 feeling of reluctance to disturb the solemnity of the studio 



could not be withheld. 

 R 



