extensive and so puzzling as this.

Although the principal gallery is barely a mile in length, there are so
many ramifications that one may walk for hours without making a complete
exploration of the daedalian corridors, even with the help of the guide.
With sufficient string to lay down and candles to light him, a stranger
might enter these depths alone and come to no harm; but if he despised the
string and trusted to his memory he would soon have reason to wish that he
had remained on the surface of the earth, where, if he lost himself, there
would be fellow-creatures to help him. Now with the sticky and tenacious
clay trying to pull off his boots at every step, now walking like a monkey
on hands and feet to keep his head from contact with the rock, he would
grow weary after an hour or so, and begin to wish to go home, or, at any
rate, to the hotel; but the more his desire to see daylight again took
shape and clearness, the more bewildered he would become, and farther and
farther he would probably wander from the small opening in the side of the
hill. Thus he might at length hear the moan of water, and if it did not
scare him, he would see by the glimmer of his solitary candle the gleam
of a stream rushing madly along, then plunging deeper into the earth, to
reappear nobody knows where. This cavern offers little of the beauty of
stalactite and stalagmite; but the roof in many places has a very curious
and fantastic appearance, derived from layers of flints embedded in the
solid limestone, and exposed to view by the disintegration of the rock or
the washing action of water. They can be best likened to the gnarled and
brown roots of old trees, but they take all manner of fanciful forms.

The little house in which I am living stands almost on the spot where some
particularly precious skeletons, attributed to prehistoric men and women,
were dug up about twenty years ago, when the late Mr. Christy was here
busily disturbing the soil that had been allowed to remain unmoved for