42, Miscellaneous Notices of American 
This cavern is dirty and disagreeable, but is still worth 
visiting, especially if the observer has not seen any thing of 
the kind on a larger scale. The floor is descending and 
slippery, from the mud and water, and it is rugged from the 
masses of rocks and stones lying upon it; the water is con- 
stantly dropping from the roof, and every drop resounds 
with a distinct echo. ‘The voice, especially when exerted 
in singing and hallooing, is prodigiously augmented, as is com- 
mon nother caverns. The quantity of stalactite and sinter, 
in the common forms of pendent and protuberant and pro- 
jecting masses, is very considerable ; its fracture presents 
the usual concentric agate-shaped structure, butit is foul and 
dingy from the mixture of dirt, so that none of it, that we 
saw, is beautiful. A little trouble in blasting and breaking 
the rock at the mouth of this cavern would render it easily 
accessible. 
It is well known that the materials for the walls of the 
city-hall of New-York were drawn from the quarries in the 
neighbourhood of West Stockbridge, and considerable use is 
made of the marble in the vicinity, especially in the monu- 
ments of the burying grounds. Our eyes were naturally at- 
tracted to these repositories of the dead, which, in all this re- 
gion, are marked by white marble monuments. In one 
village we were struck with a peculiarity, which, however 
out of place, we will venture to mention. There is in the 
burying ground in this village a very decent vault, or tomb 
constructed in the usual form, with a door above ground— 
but on the door there is a knocker. Among a moral and re- 
ligious people, we will not suppose this a mere freak of levity — 
a misplaced joke of the living upon the mute voice of the 
dead. Whatis itthen? Did the builder feel that a door 
even of a tomb is unfinished without a knocker ? A stran- 
ger incident rarely occurs to the traveller; not even the flag- 
staff on the tomb at New-Lebanon. 
Chilorite abounds in the region about Lanesborough. It 
is frequent in the loose pieces of quartz along the road, and 
is very well characterized. 
Mountain groups and ridges of singular grandeur and 
beauty occur in all the region from Litchfield to and around 
Williamstown and Bennington. In Pownal, the S. W. cor- 
