She was right. The roaring of the waters grew deafening and the path
became so rugged with jagged and irregularly piled rocks, that Cap
could scarcely keep her horse upon his feet in climbing over them.
And suddenly, when she least looked for it, the great natural
curiosity--the Devil's Punch Bowl--burst upon her view!

It was an awful abyss, scooped out as it were from the very bowels
of the earth, with its steep sides rent open in dreadful chasms, and
far down in its fearful depths a boiling whirlpool of black waters.

Urging her reluctant steed through a thicket of stunted thorns and
over a chaos of shattered rocks, Capitola approached as near as she
safely could to the brink of this awful pit. So absorbed was she in
gazing upon this terrible phenomenon of natural scenery that she had
not noticed, in the thicket on her right, a low hut that, with its
brown-green moldering colors, fell so naturally in with the hue of
the surrounding scenery as easily to escape observation. She did not
even observe that the sky was entirely overcast, and the thunder was
muttering in the distance. She was aroused from her profound reverie
by a voice near her asking:

"Who are you, that dares to come without a guide to the Devil's
Punch Bowl?"

Capitola looked around and came nearer screaming than she ever had
been in her life, upon seeing the apparition that stood before her.
Was it man, woman, beast or demon? She could not tell! It was a very
tall, spare form, with a black cloth petticoat tied around the
waist, a blue coat buttoned over the breast, and a black felt hat