And he was with us all the way, as we clambered over the immense blocks and threaded a passage between them and pulled weary legs up, one after the other.

So steep lay the jumble of cliff fragments that we lost sight of the cave long before we got near it.

Suddenly we rounded a stone, to halt and gasp at the thing looming before us.
The dark portal of death or hell might have yawned there.

A gloomy hole, large enough to admit a church, had been hollowed in the cliff by ages of nature's chiseling.
"Vast sepulcher of Time's past, give up thy dead!" cried Wallace, solemnly.
"Oh! dark Stygian cave forlorn!" quoted I, as feelingly as my friend.
Jones hauled us down from the clouds.
"Now, I wonder what kind of a prehistoric animal holed in here ?" said he.
Forever the one absorbing interest! If he realized the sublimity of this place, he did not show it.
The floor of the cave ascended from the very threshold.

Stony ridges circled from wall to wall.