8o 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. III. 
As the illumination of the Dudley Caverns is of very rare 
occurrence, thousands of people flocked from the surround¬ 
ing country, in spite of the abominable weather, in order 
to witness the unusual and beautiful spectacle. Naturally 
only a small part of the crowd could be conveyed by the 
boats, and the greater part had to proceed by the galleries. 
Just as the foremost boat, in which I was, passed through 
the doorway, which had been boldly blasted in the rock, 
and we had cast the first glance over the immeasurable 
sea of light and flame, the long vault resounded with 
thunder crashes and rollings in quick succession. We 
thought the foundations of the earth were moving, that 
they were on the point of giving way, that a great 
geological catastrophe was approaching which would bury 
unlearned and learned alike in the bowels of the earth, in 
order to furnish to posterity some materials of comparative 
anatomy for the precise definition of the organisation of 
the Adamite creation. But it was only weak man who 
made this noise ; at the farthest end of the cavern a huge 
mass of limestone had been blown up by gunpowder in 
order to show the company how the caverns were begun, 
and millions of pieces of stone were torn from the bosom 
of the earth. 
“ Whilst the more fortunate of the visitors to the cavern 
pressed on to the interior of the hill comfortably in 
their boats, and were alone in a position to see the whole 
of the fairy-like spectacle, the crowd was obliged to twist 
and jostle each other through the higher passages and 
paths ; but the moving throng indispensably contributed 
to the artistic life of the scene. As the floor of the hewn- 
out galleries is sometimes broad and somewhat steep, we 
were able to survey completely the moving masses, and 
watch the most wonderful groups form themselves and 
vanish again in the manifold lights. Sometimes the 
people’s faces shone in a greyish red light ; sometimes there 
appeared, alongside and in front of us, a crowd of ghostly 
corpses pacing the Lower Regions, so pale and ashy did 
the people in their stony heights seem to us in our little 
boats. The miners had been obliged to leave. at short 
