Proceeding onward about one-hundred feet, we reached a door, set in a
rough stone wall, stretched across and completely blocking up the
Cave; which was no sooner opened, than our lamps were extinguished by
the violence of the wind rushing outwards. An accurate estimate of the
external temperature, may at any time, be made, by noting the force of
the wind as it blows inward or outward. When it is very warm without,
the wind blows outwards with violence; but when cold, it blows inwards
with proportionate force. The temperature of the Cave, (winter and
summer,) is invariably the same--59° Fahrenheit; and its atmosphere is
perfectly uniform, dry, and of most extraordinary salubrity.

Our lamps being relighted, we soon reached a narrow passage faced on
the left side by a wall, built by the miners to confine the loose
stone thrown up in the course of their operations, when gradually
descending a short distance, we entered the great vestibule or
ante-chamber of the Cave. What do we now see? Midnight!--the
blackness of darkness!--Nothing! Where is the wall we were lately
elbowing out of the way? It has vanished!--It is lost! We are walled
in by darkness, and darkness canopies us above. Look again;--Swing
your torches aloft! Aye, now you can see it; far up, a hundred feet
above your head, a grey ceiling rolling dimly away like a cloud, and
heavy buttresses, bending under the weight, curling and toppling over
their base, begin to project their enormous masses from the shadowy
wall. How vast! How solemn! How awful! The little bells of the brain
are ringing in your ears; you hear nothing else--not even a sigh of
air--not even the echo of a drop of water falling from the roof. The
guide triumphs in your look of amazement and awe; he falls to work on
certain old wooden ruins, to you, yet invisible, and builds a brace or
two of fires, by the aid of which you begin to have a better
conception of the scene around you. You are in the vestibule or