10 DESCRIPTION OF THE 



where roads intersect each other, it furnishes you 

 with the idea of a subterranean town ; and after ha- 

 ling been shut out from day light three or four hour?, 

 with a candle in your hand, and companions with 

 you having lights, sometimes crawling on jour hands 

 and knees, sometimes going on your breast, and at 

 other times on your side, assuming nearly the ver- 

 micular motion, through narrow passes, you are 

 pleased with the return of day, as in your retreat 

 from the interior region you draw near the mouth 

 of the damp and gloomy cavern. 



The Cave is intersected by vertical fissures, in. 

 two of \t hich a person can stand erect, one of them 

 leaves the main road in a winding direction and 



D 



comes into it again : it has several small passages, 

 one of which has not been traced to its termination, 

 and the extremity of another may be seen in a cre- 

 vice which appears on the face of the quarry. 



.From the present entrance, on either side of the 

 cave is a horizontal bed of compact blue limestone, 

 with its edge uneven and smoothed, perhaps by the 

 trickling of water down it, when the cave was kept 

 from the access of atmospheric air, by its mouth 

 being closed by the rubbish before mentioned. 



The discontinuance of this bed from one side of the 

 cave to the other, is the cause of the opening: though 

 by what means the bed was fire interrupted and 

 brokei^cannot perhaps be satisfactorily explained* 



* It occured to me that in the formation of the sec- 

 ondary rock at the general inundation, this, and all 

 other cares and fissures existing in the limestone, might 

 have been produced by the accumulation of loamy clay, 



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