214 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



for taking care of the horses, and so on, but I ter- 

 minated the matter abruptly by declaring that I 

 should not pay one of them a medio ; and, ordering 

 them all away from the door, which they were 

 smothering, and a little infected with one of their 

 apprehensions of starting some wild beast, which 

 might be making his lair in the recesses of the cave, 

 I entered with a candle in one hand and a pistol in 

 the other. 



The entrance faces the west. The mouth was 

 filled up with rubbish, scrambling over which, I stood 

 in a narrow passage or gallery, constructed, like all 

 the apartments above ground, with smooth walls and 

 triangular arched ceiling. This passage was about 

 four feet wide, and seven feet high to the top of the 

 arch. It ran due east, and at the distance of six or 

 eight yards opened into another, or rather was stop- 

 ped by another crossing it, and running north and 

 south. I took first that on the right hand, running 

 south. At the distance of a few yards, on the right 

 side of the wall, I found a door, filled up, and at the 

 distance of thirty-five feet the passage ended, and a 

 door opened at right angles on the left into another 

 gallery running due east. Following this, at the 

 distance of thirteen feet I found another gallery on 

 the left, running north, and beyond it, at the end, still 

 another, also on the left, and running north, four 

 yards long, and then walled up, with only an open- 

 ing in it about a foot square. 



Turning back, I entered the gallery which I had 



