persons before they are aware of it."

[Illustration: STAR CHAMBER.
On Stone by T. Campbell
Bauer & Teschemacher's Lith.]




CHAPTER V.

Star Chamber--Salts Room--Indian Houses--Cross Rooms--Black Chambers--
A Dinner Party--Humble Chute--Solitary Care--Fairy Grotto--Chief City
or Temple--Lee's Description--Return to the Hotel.


The Star Chamber next attracted our attention. It presents the most
perfect optical illusion imaginable; in looking up to the ceiling,
which is here very high, you seem to see the very firmament itself,
studded with stars; and afar off, a comet with its long, bright tail.
Not far from this Star Chamber, may be seen, in a cavity in the wall
on the right, and about twenty feet above the floor, an oak pole about
ten feet long and six inches in diameter, with two round sticks of
half the thickness and three feet long, tied on to it transversely, at
about four feet apart. By means of a ladder we ascended to the cavity,
and found the pole to be firmly fixed--one end resting on the bottom
of the cavity, and the other reaching across and forced into a crevice
about three feet above. We supposed that this was a ladder once used
by the former inhabitants of the Cave, in getting the salts which are
incrusted on the walls in many places. Doct. Locke, of the Medical