LAKES AND CAVES. 45 



The Blue Hill range is about seven miles long, and running east 

 and Avest, separates this lake from Lake Cunningham— a smaller 

 body of shallow water, half a mile Avidc, and two and two-thirds 

 miles in length from east to west. The negro drivers, by design 

 or ignorance, palm off this lake upon strangers for Killarney — it 

 being nearer and more accessible than the latter. Cunningham, 

 with its little mangrove islands, is well worth visiting, and the 

 drive for a mile or two through the pine woods and scrub pal- 

 mettoes, rendered necessary to reach it, gives one an opportunity 

 to see something of the low, wet, rough, and rocky make up of 

 portions of the island. Wild flowers and palmetto leaves, gath- 

 ered by the wayside, often give a gay and festive aijpearance to 

 the vehicles of the excursionists upon their return near the 

 close of day or in the edge of the evening. The Blue Hills 

 attain an elevation of 120 feet. 



Caves exist in the western extremity of the hill that separates 

 the two lakes, and there is always connected with caverns in the 

 rocks enough of the weird and wild and mysterious to make tliem 

 objects of interest. We found it so with these. Indeed their 

 proximity to a sea so recently infested by pirates, and their loca- 

 tion upon an island not very long ago in possession of a now 

 vanished race of men, suggest many a question wliicli only the 

 dead can answer. As we followed our dusky guide and passed 

 from one chamber to another over the rocks, disturbing and 

 driving from their dark retreats the bats, it was not difficult to 

 imagine that the ghosts of the cruel and reckless buccaneers, and 

 the shades of tlie unfortunate and grossly wronged Indians, 

 Avere peering at us in the darkness and gloom. But after 

 l)uilding a fire in the deepest, darkest and most dismal chamber 

 of them all, which was entered through a small opening in a 

 partition of rock, we experienced a feeling of relief, knowing that 

 the elfs of evil vanish with the li"ht. 



