244 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTEES. 



i 



him, not to the station, but to a cave which he used as 

 one of his places of deposit. No one knew of the existence 

 cf this hiding-place but himself, and he had discovered it by 

 the accident of having driven a wounded bear into it. 



The entrance was very small and covered with briars ; 

 pushing these aside, you looked down into what seemed a 

 deep well ; when the eye became accustomed to the darkness, 

 you could gradually discover a dry, white bottom. Harrod 

 had descended into it by means of a pole ladder which he had 

 let down; this ladder, which is essentially a frontier con- 

 trivance, consists merely of a stout sapling, which is thick 

 set with limbs; the sapling being cut down, the limbs are 

 chopped off within six inches from the trunk, thus leaving 

 excellent foothold to climb by. 



When you reached the bottom, which was about twelve feet 

 below the surface, you found yourself in a small, but irregularly 

 shaped room, the ceiling of which was hung with many beau- 

 tiful and fantastic stalactites, from among which, and at the 

 farther extremity of the room, a small, clear stream, poured 

 steadily down into a white, round basin, which it had worn 

 into the solid limestone. 



The little stream, after passing across the length of the 

 chamber, found vent through a dark hole in the wall, about 

 large enough to admit a man, crawling in on his hands and 

 knees. Here, over the whitest sand, it escaped into unknown 

 caverns beyond. From the point of every stalactite on the 

 ceiling a drop of water fell slowly upon stalactites rising to 

 meet them, many of which had assumed the most extraordi- 

 nary shapes. About twelve feet square of the ceiling and 

 floor of this singular subterranean chamber was as dry as 

 tinder. 



I am thus particular in describing this cave, having once 

 visited it, and been singularly impressed with the quaint 

 peculiarities of the place. Among other things, the steady 

 dropping of the water upon the white and ringing stalactites 1 , 



