MERGE TO GYRENE. 
447 
tombs had equally been excavated there to which the galleries in 
question conducted. The deep marks of chariot wheels along the 
galleries prove that these also had formerly been used as roads ; and 
the romantic beauty of their situation, on the very brink of the steep 
descent to the bed of the torrent below, must have rendered them 
very delightful ones. There seems to have been originally a parapet 
wall along the dangerous parts of the road, (we mean those where 
the descent is very abrupt,) for there are considerable traces of one 
still extant about three feet from the ground : in some places, how- 
ever, (where the road is not more than three feet in width, with 
the high, perpendicular rock on one side, and an abrupt descent to 
the torrent on the other,) there is no such defence now remaining ; 
and the passage from one part of the gallery to the other is not here 
quite so safe for nervous people as it might be. The steep sides of 
the descent are thickly overgrown with the most beautiful flowering- 
shrubs and creepers, and tall trees are growing in the wildest forms 
and positions above and below the roads. The Duke of Clarence 
(when the choice of his death was proposed to him) had a fancy to 
be drowned in a butt of malmsey ; and we think, if we found our- 
selves in a similar dilemma, that we should pitch upon some part 
of this charming ravine, as the spot from which we could hurl 
ourselves through myrtles and oleanders into the pure stream which 
dashes below, with more pleasure than one could leap with from life 
into death in most other places that we know of. We must, how- 
ever, confess that in passing along the dangerous parts of the galleries 
here alluded to, no such fancy ever entered our heads; and we 
