FAR AND NEAR 



midnight I crept out, and, wrapped in my blanket, 

 lay upon the floor, — to reduce the altitude, my 

 son said : but no, it was to reduce the problem to 

 simpler terms. 



It was foggy and misty when we left Coleyville 

 in the morning, and continued so until we had 

 reduced the altitude by over a thousand feet, and 

 had got below the cloud-line, when at noon, in the 

 valley of Hector's River, we ran into sunshine. 



In the afternoon we skirted for two or three hours 

 that curious Cock Pit country, — a vast area cov- 

 ered with huge rough-hewn rocky bowls, several 

 hundred feet deep, and many hundred or even 

 thousand feet across the top, their rims craggy, 

 wooded, their sides and bottoms green and verdur- 

 ous, usually with a stream or river coming out of 

 the earth on one side, and plunging into it again on 

 the other, — a land of pits and caves and subter- 

 ranean water-courses. The road, hard and smooth, 

 wound round the rims of these huge pits or bowls, 

 giving us views into the deep, sunken valleys, now 

 on the right hand, nov/ on the left. Now we see a 

 sparkling current, now the hill has swallowed it. 

 The streams come from the earth quietly, gently^ 

 and as quietly and gently they return to it. This 

 region is full of caves, one of which, Oxford Cave, 

 near Balaclava, we explored. It was like our own 

 caves, a series of huge irregular chambers, with 

 the inevitable stalactites and stalagmites, and — 



U6 



