Desmond here interrupted, and said:

"I ain't afraid of ghosts; I've met one and I've got used to them."

"I don't mean a ghost, I mean a crevice; go very slow and carefully, or
you may become a ghost yourself."

Right here we wish to exchange a few words with our readers in regard to
these rock conformations. Right in the State of New York, in Ulster
County, and in what is called the Shawangunk Mountains, there are some
of the most wonderful caves and crevices, and in some of these caves
during the winter the snow drifts down, and in the spring becomes a
solid mass of ice, and the writer remembers upon one occasion after a
long and weary scramble over rocks under the face of a cliff which
towers up and overlooks counties, being shown a rock cave where there
was a solid mass of ice, which, in its contour resembled a ship. The ice
must have been at least sixty feet in length, twenty feet broad, and
fully forty feet high, and adjoining it were all manner of caves. These
caves are within a few miles of several settlements, and possibly at the
time of the visit of the writer had not been entered by over a dozen
persons. In these mountains are some very remarkable rock conformations,
and we merely mention this fact to the lads in the East, who may think
that these stories of rock caverns are exaggerated. There are probably
hundreds of caves in the Catskill and Shawangunk Mountains that have
never been entered or explored since the days when the early settlers
may have found them while bear hunting.

Desmond had been raised, as we have stated, near the mountains, and
probably had explored many rock caverns, and it is because of this fact