been kept secret by the natives, who looked upon it as a secure hiding-
place for themselves and their chattels when the storm of war swept
over the Riesen Gebirge. But the fatal fire of 1824 betrayed their
secret to the world, and after a little hesitation, thinking to make
profit out of it as a show-place, paths were cut through it, and it was
advertised in 1847. When, in 1866, the Prussians passed by, they
incurred neither the risk nor the trouble of hunting out the refugees
from their place of concealment.

The rocks run up to 200 feet, the loftiest being 280 feet. They assume
the most fantastic shapes. The passage through the fissures is so
narrow that in some places it can be threaded by one man alone at a
time, the others following in single file. A rivulet, clear as crystal,
traverses the network of gullies, and in one place forms a tiny
cascade. One nook is called the Southern Siberia, because in it the
snow lies unmelted throughout the summer.

At intervals the rocks fall back and form open spaces, and at one
describe an amphitheatre upon a vista of rolling forest.

But if this "petrified forest," as it has been called, served as a
refuge for the peasants in troublous times, it has also been employed
by brigands as their fastness whence to ravage the country and render
the roads perilous. But of their exploits I shall have more to say in
the chapter on robber-dens.

Caverns, as well as chasms, have always served this same purpose.

There is something remarkably human and significant in the prophecy of
Isaiah relative to the coming of the Judge of all the earth: "They