218 



WONDERFUL CAVE AT ADELSBERG, 



IN CARNIOLA. 



After scrambling for two hours up and down many a dangerous cliff, 

 and along the brink of many a frightful precipice, we entered a nearly 

 impenetrable forest, from which we only emerged to behold a repetition 

 of the same savage scenery, which accompanied us to the wonderful 

 grotto ; around which nature seemed to concentrate all her terrors, so as 

 to render it a perfect Tartarus. A tremendous pile of rocks reared their 

 giddy heights to the clouds; upon one of those lesser peaks, the majestic 

 ruins of a castle threatened to crush us with its crumbling walls. The 

 river Poick in one place was tearing a passage through a perfect chaos 

 of shattered crags ; in another turning a mill, till at length it rushed in a 

 torrent through the contracted glen beneath, and such was the violence 

 of its current, that the frail bridge thrown from rock to rock, over which 

 we passed, trembled beneath us. In general we see rivers tumbling 

 down from tops of mountains, and then fertilize a valley ; but in this wild 

 country, as if every thing in it were to border on the marvellous, we see 

 a river, after its descent, enter the earth and entirely disappear. 



The entrance to the grotto is secured by a door, which, being opened, 

 we were met by flocks of owls and bats, scared by the pine torches of the 

 guides. We proceeded through a long spacious gallery of about a 

 hundred paces, when it suddenly opened into an immense cavern of the 

 most colossal height, but this was merely the vestibule to the most 

 magnificent of nature's temples ; for at length we arrived beneath a vast 

 dome, whose altitude, by torch light, seemed immeasurable! This 

 splendid hall was fifty-feet broad, seventy feet long, and encrusted with 

 stalactites of the most surpassing beauty, sparkling like diamonds, and 

 appeared worthy of being the palace of the Gnome King himself. The 

 floor is quite level, and a few wooden benches and rustic chandeliers, 

 told that this was the hall in which the peasants, by a merry dance, 

 celebrated annually the festival of their patron saint. From hence the 

 caverns branch off in different directions; not in long galleries, but in 

 a succession of grottos. Those to the left are numerous, spacious, and 

 lofty; while the others, though smaller, are more varied in their 

 fantastic forms. As we advanced they became more elevated, and the 

 columns more majestic, till, after traversing two leagues in the heart of the 



