CAVES OF KEREFTO. 
547 
little time, reached a large cave of nature’s own work entirely; 
the only addition from man being a flight of steps cut up to its 
entrance. When within, we perceived light through a small 
crack in the rock; and on looking at my compass, I found it lay 
south-east; hence, we were then near that face of the mountain. 
In this remote cavern I observed the singularity of several distinct 
heaps of stones, with a large one stuck up in the center of each 
heap, in the manner of a memorial over graves ; and, indeed, I 
should think them to be such. In a natural recess of the same 
chamber, we discovered a wooden coffin of rude workmanship, 
containing a body wrapped in linen, and from the freshness of 
the winding-sheet, it must have been of recent interment. 
Hence I doubt not that both it and the heaps of stones near 
cover the remains of some of the bold followers of Mustapha 
Beg, a mountain chief, who, with sixty desperate men and their 
families, about four years ago took possession of the Kerefto 
caves, and holding them as an impregnable fortress, subsisted by 
the most daring robberies. Some met the free-booter’s fate in 
various ways ; but the leader himself afterwards received pardon, 
and is now at the court of the present Wally of Senna. Having 
left this den, of probably more direful scenes than any which 
the four-footed prowlers of the same midnight regions might 
have exhibited, we retraced our steps back to the great center 
cavern ; whence we diverged again, down the northern avenue, 
seeing in our way other ramifications branching to the right and 
left, but we kept on in that which seemed the principal, till, 
having got deep in water, we were obliged to stop, and return. 
Our venerable guide remarked, that had it been shallower now, 
and we could therefore have gone forward to the end, we should 
have arrived at a large cave, containing a pond in the middle 
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