If you enter one of the caves revealed in the distance, you find yourself in a deep ravine, with huge piles of gray rock jutting out more and more, till they nearly meet at top. Looking upward, through this narrow aperture, you see, high, high above you, a vaulted roof of _black_ rock, studded with brilliant spar, like constellations in the sky, seen at midnight, from the deep clefts of a mountain. This is called the Star Chamber. It makes one think of Schiller's grand description of William Tell sternly waiting for Gessler, among the shadows of the Alps, and of Wordsworth's picture of
"Yorkshire dales Among the rocks and winding scars, Where deep and low the hamlets lie, Beneath their little patch of sky, And little lot of stars."
In this neighborhood is a vast, dreary chamber, which Stephen, the guide, called Bandit's Hall, the first moment his eye rested on it; and the name is singularly expressive of its character. Its ragged roughness and sullen gloom are indescribable. The floor is a mountainous heap of loose stones, and not an inch of even surface could be found on roof or walls. Imagine two or three travellers, with their lamps, passing through this place of evil aspect. The deep, suspicions-looking recesses and frightful crags are but partially revealed in the feeble light. All at once, a Bengal Light blazes up, and every black rock and frowning cliff stands out in the brilliant glare. The contrast is sublime beyond imagination. It is as if a man had seen the hills and trees of this earth only in the dim outline of a moonless night, and they should, for the first time, be revealed to him in the gushing glory of the morning sun. But the greatest wonder in this region of the cave, is Mammoth Dome--a giant among giants. It is so immensely high and vast, that three of the most powerful Bengal Lights illuminate it very imperfectly. That portion of the ceiling which becomes visible, is three hundred feet above your head, and remarkably resembles the aisles of Westminster Abbey. It is supposed that the top of this dome is near the surface of the ground. Another route from the Devil's Council Chamber conducts you to a smooth, level path, called Pensacola Avenue. Here are numerous formations of crystallized gypsum, but not as beautiful or as various as are found farther on. From various slopes and openings, caves above and below are visible. The Mecca's shrine of this pilgrimage is Angelica's Grotto, completely lined and covered with the largest and richest dog's tooth spar. A person who visited the place, a few years since, laid his sacrilegious hands upon it, while the guide's back was turned towards whim. He coolly demolished a magnificent mass of spar, sparkling most conspicuously on the very centre of the arch, and wrote his own insignificant name in its place. This was _his_ fashion of securing immortality! It is well that fairies and giants are powerless in the nineteenth century, else had the indignant genii of the cave crushed his bones to impalpable powder.