THE CAVE OF IIUNGA. 61 



"tradition, the chieftain who first discovered this remarkable cave 

 while diving after a turtle, used it subsequently as a place of 

 refuge for his mistress to screen her from the persecutions of 

 ithe reigning despot. The sea faithfully guarded his secret: 

 after a few weeks of seclusion, he fled with his beloved to the 

 Teejee Islands, and on his returning to his native home after 

 the death of the tyrant, his countrymen heard with astonish- 

 ment of the wonderful asylum that had been revealed to him 

 by the beneficent sea-gods. Lord Byron adopted this graceful 

 tale as the subject of his poem " The Island, or Christian and 

 his Comrades," and has thus described the cave, no doubt 

 largely adorning it from the stores of his brilliant fancy : 



"Around she pointed to a spacious cave, 

 Whose only portal was the keyless wave 

 (A hollow archway, by the sun unseen, 

 Save through the billows' glassy veil of green, 

 On some transparent ocean holiday, 

 When all the finny people are at play). 



" Wide it was and high ; 

 And showed a self -born Gothic canopy. 

 The arch upreared by Nature's architect, 

 The architrave some earthquake might erect ; 

 The buttress from some mountain's bosom hurl'd, 

 When the poles crash'd and water was the world ; 

 Or harden'd from some earth-absorbing fire, 

 While yet the globe reek'd from its funeral pyre. 

 The fretted pinnacle, the aisle, the nave, 

 Were there, all scoop'd by darkness from her cate. 

 There, with a little tinge of fantasy, 

 Fantastic faces mopp'd and moVd on high ; 

 And then a mitre or a shrine would fix 

 The eye upon its seeming crucifix. 

 Thus Nature played with the stalactites, 

 And built herself a chapel of the seas." 



■On many rocky shores the ocean has worn out subterraneous 

 •channels in the cliffs against which it has been beating for ages, 

 and then frequently emerges in water-spouts or fountains from 

 the opposite end. Thus, in the Skerries, one of the Shetland 

 Islands, a deep chasm or inlet, which is open overhead, is con- 

 tinued under ground and then again opens to the sky in the 

 middle of the island. When the water is high, the waves rise 

 up through this aperture like the blowing of a whale in noise 

 •and appearance. 



E 2 



