BARBELONA GATE. 219 



earth, our progress was terminated by deep subterranean lake. Itwould 

 be impossible to describe with any degree of accuracy, the varied, 

 natural architecture of this city of stalactites (spars like icicles). In one 

 place we appeared to wander through the aisles of a gothic cathedral, 

 supported by columns of the most gigantic height, sometimes uniform 

 and sometimes clustered together, as if fluted. Some of the smaller 

 grottos are entirely inlaid with stalactites, and as they reflected the 

 burning torches, appeared one blaze of light. The sparry masses 

 exhibited every form which the invention of the guides could devise; 

 in one place we had crystal cascades of the most dazzling brightness; 

 in another, rows of pillars, ornamented with festoons; here triumphal 

 arches, and there the Emperor's throne surmounted by a crown. In 

 short, the whole range appears as if real objects had been metamorphosed 

 into crystal, by the power of some mighty magician. However, 

 it is not only the beauty of the stalactites, and their innumerable forms 

 that arrest our attention, but the foaming river Poick, which here again 

 makes its appearance, roaring in the horrible abyss beneath, by the side 

 of whose frightful gorge, and across whose rocky ridges, we frequently 

 bent our course. Here the unbroken solitude that reigned, the un- 

 earthly stillness, save the crash of the mighty flood, the supernatural 

 appearance of every object around, might impress even the least 

 imaginative with a sort of superstitious terror. 



On our return, the guides set fire to a bundle of straw, part of which 

 they threw into the abyss beneath, when a scene of grandeur ensued 

 perfectly indescribable. The whole intermediate space, from the almost 

 fathomless gulf in which the river is rushing, to the loftiest above, was 

 instantly illuminated by the bright glare, forming a lively representation 

 of the infernal regions. The grottos at Muggendorf, in Franconia, 

 however interesting, are mere mouse holes compared with this, which 

 equals in colossal grandeur its own gigantic Alps. 



GATE OF BARCELONA. 



Barcelona is of very great antiquity, having been founded more than 

 two centuries, B. C., by Hamilcar Barcas, father of the great Hannibal, 

 from whom it derives its name. It made no great figure under Roman 

 domination, having been eclipsed by the immense city of Tarroco, now 

 Tarragona. When the Saracens overran Spain, Barcelona shared the 

 common fate, and yielded to the dominion of Mahomet. Its remoteness, 

 however, from Cordova, the seat of the Saracen empire, rendered its 

 tenure very precarious, and accordingly, in the ninth century, it was 



