58 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
jungle. There was much to please the eye, but not a little of 
the beauty was eliminated when we paused to muse and meditate. 
Before we had an opportunity to do much of the latter, we 
were invited by our military friends to explore that portion of 
the fort which exists below the surface, in the very bowels of the 
limestone hill. Colored subordinates attended with lanterns, 
while the military officials devoted themselves to their guests, 
and, with a gallantry characteristic of military men, personally 
aided the ladies in treading the dark and dismal corridors, and 
exploring the windowless rooms which have been excavated in 
the rock. We entered the mouth of a small, round, deep well 
hole, and descended a long flight of spiral stairs cut in the rock. 
We traversed slowly and carefully in the darkness, one after the 
other, the small convolutions of this long, perpendicular, immov- 
able, excavated stone cork-screw. Our memory of this artificial 
military cave is not clear cut. It partakes somewhat of the dark- 
ness of the caverns we explored. The rooms and corridors, with 
their sides, and floors, and ceilings of stone, were no doubt made 
after some deeply cogitated and wise plan, but the most we rec- 
ollect is that they were dark and dismal dungeons. Here and 
there we remember to have seen loop holes, through which, from 
safe coverts, musketeers might shoot the men who should succeed 
in scaling the walls. 
If the reader desires, in a cheap and comparatively easy way, 
to experience the delightful sensations which a visit to Fort 
Charlotte’s subterranean rooms is so well calculated to produce, 
he has only to go into some large deep cellar and follow a negro 
with a lantern for half an hour in the darkness, and his curiosity, 
if he is a reasonable man, will be fully gratified. 
Not far from our first landing place at the foot of the spiral 
stairs, we remember endeavoring to peer into the darkness of a 
well hole in the rock which had been sunk to the foundations of 
