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Among other stories told at the Crevice
Pit, was one—wild, and terrible enough, if
true—of a man who, in former days, was
master of a little tavern on a public road,
some twenty miles off; at which place of entertainment,
it began to be remarked by the
neighbours, more travellers called than were
ever known to leave it. Immediately behind
the house, not fifty yards from the road, is a
cavern, which, if its interior corresponds with
its entrance, must be of uncommon grandeur.
It opens from the level ground, by a sink or
declivity like that of the Mammoth Cave;
but the descent is much less precipitous, as

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well as wider and longer, making a wild little
glen, studded with rocks, bushes, and trees,
that terminates under a vast, marble-looking
arch, the mouth of the cave. The view from
this mouth, looking back to the glen, is inexpressibly
grand and beautiful—a vista, or
picture, one might fancy, of a waste nook of
Paradise, set or framed in a grotto-work of
stone. The cavern is said to continue only
for about a hundred yards, when it is sudderly
lost in a vast pit of unknown depth.

The keeper of the Cave Inn the story represents
as a dark villain, accustomed to rob
and murder all travellers rich enough to reward
his trouble; for which purpose, as well
as for that of concealment, the cave behind the
house afforded him unusual facilities. His plan
of proceedings, when he had resolved the death
of a traveller, was, first, under the plea of
looking after the victim's horse, before going
to bed, to lead the animal from the stable
into the cave, and force him into the pit; then,
with an appearance of concern, to inform the
traveller his beast had strayed into the cave
among the rocks, whence he could not remove
him without assistance; and thus obtain the
latter to accompany him into the infernal den;
where, arriving at the chasm, a sudden blow

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or push precipitated the human victim also
into the gulf, and with him all evidence of the
crime by which he had perished.

This horrible story I afterwards heard repeated
by other persons, some of whom declared
that the innkeeper's villany had been
finally brought to light by the confessions of
an agonized wife, the witness, though not the
accomplice, of his murders; while others
thought that his guilt rested merely upon suspicion,
for which the sudden disappearance
of several travellers unfortunately gave too
many grounds. I must confess that none of
my informants were very positive in their
modes of telling the story, and none able to
vouch for its truth; while one cautious, or
judicious, personage professed an entire disbelief
in the innkeeper's guilt, hinting that
the whole story had grown out of the wild
prattling of a woman, the poor man's wife,
who was, in the narrator's opinion, a mere
unhappy lunatic. The tale, however, had
currency enough to give the suspected man
trouble, and he soon afterwards left the country,
and was no more heard of.

But let us retrace our steps to the Vestibule;
let us enter the Grand Gallery; for we

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have yet much to see—or rather, we have all
to see—and much to hear.

The Grand Gallery is a hundred feet wide,
with an average height of forty or fifty. Its
roof is, for the most part, flat and regular; its
walls broken by massive buttresses, that here
and there stare out of the gloom, and salute
us with a rocky frown. Fancy traces among
them a thousand majestic resemblances to
scenes recollected, or imagined, in the external
world. On the right hand, we see the
Rocky Mountains—the Chippewyan in little,
without the superfluous caps of snow; on the
left, the Cliffs of Kentucky—excellent likenesses
all, as far as crags fifty feet high, bare
and desolate, and shrouded in never-ending
night, can resemble cliffs of three hundred
feet, adorned with trees and flowers, shining
like marble in the brave sunshine, and glassing
their beauty in the crystal river below.
Among these Kentucky cliffs, just under the
ceiling, is a gap in the wall, into which you
can scramble, and make your way down a
chaotic gulf, creeping like a rat under and
among huge loose rocks, to a depth of eighty
or ninety feet—that is, you can do all this,
provided you do not break your neck before
you get half way.

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A hundred yards further on, the roof suddenly
sinks somewhat, forming an inclined
plane, on which clouds seem to float as in a
midnight sky. And here Nature, who, in
these same clouds, proves that she is not so
good a painter below the earth as she is
above, has scooped out a spacious cove on
the left hand, as wide and high as the Grand
Gallery into which it opens, but of little more
than a hundred feet in extent. Here, among
rude rocks, has been constructed a still ruder
altar—a wooden desk, or pulpit; from which,
while torches shone around from crag to
crag, the preacher has proclaimed the word
of God, and the voices of a congregation
have arisen in solemn hosannas. The services
of worship in such a place must have
been strangely and profoundly impressive. It
is a cathedral which, man feels, has been piled,
not by the art of man, but by the will of his
Maker. But it is a place to inculcate religious
fear, rather than pious affection.

Another hundred yards beyond the Church—
for so the cove of the pulpit is called—and
you find yourself again among the ruins of
nitre works. The spacious floor is occupied
with vats filled in with earth, which is now,
however, beginning to sink, giving to the

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place somewhat the air of an ancient and
neglected cemetery—a cemetery of Brobdignags.
A tall frame-work of timbers, that
once supported a forcing pump, is yet standing
in the midst. Opposite to it, a ladder is
seen resting against the right hand wall.
Looking up, you perceive a gap in the wall
fifty feet wide, and twenty high, with several
huge rocks lying in it, one of them looking
like a tower commanding the savage pass.
This is the entrance of the Haunted Chambers.

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