and broke down enough of it to set through.
Hereupon the great gate was suddenly flung
open, and the bullock was driven out again by two
men, who had been digging a grave, and who
would, it seemed, have dug on for ever without
caring a straw for our appeals to be admitted.
Out came the bullock, charging with his head
down, and out rushed the men after him, flinging
stones at him as big as one's fist. We
stood meekly by, to let this whirlwind pass,
and then quietly walked in. Back came the
grave diggers, banged the door, and went on
digging their grave without vouchsafing us
a word. The first thing we saw on entering
was about forty baskets full of skulls and
bones. There was a great receptacle in the
middle of the cemetery, and into it all these
remains would be cast, as belonging to those
whose families were not rich enough to pay
double fees. In Venezuela even the dead must
pav for a single bed, and those who cannot, or
will not, will be dug up at the end of the year
and chucked into an omnium gatherum. I
counted about a hundred tombs of mark, some
of them bearing the names of the most illustrious
families in the republic. Among them
was, I remember, one inscribed to the memory
of Catalina Cunningham de Oldenburg!

We remounted and rode straight to the mountain.
In a few minutes we got among low
jungle, which grew more and more impervious,
until we had to alight, and, leaving our
horses with the groom, push our way through
the jungle on foot. This was not very pleasant,
but worse things were coming; the bushes
were so thick that we could not see where we
were stepping; and presently all three of us
descended with a crash, into a precipitous
ravine. As soon as I could recover my
equilibrium, I shouted in great wrath to the guide,
"Is this the way to the cavern?" My temper
was not improved when the confounded
fellow made his eternal reply, "tal vez," "perhaps."
I have no doubt the delectable place
we were in was full of snakes, but I caught
a glimpse of only one, and that a very small
one; small as it was, however, I knew it to be a
coral, the bite of which proves mortal in an hour
or two. The sight of this creature seemed to
lend me wings, and, in spite of my great riding-
boots, I emerged on the other side of the ravine
almost as quickly as I had descended. We
now got upon a very steep bit, covered with
grass, in which lurked innumerable pieces of
rock, and over these we stumbled in a way
that verv soon relieved us of the little breath
we had feft. Thinking, however, that the caves
were straight above us, we struggled frantically
on, until we got to the height of about a thousand
feet, when I called out to Colon that I was
completely exhausted and must sit down. "Well,"
said he, "don't sit down where you are, unless
you want to be picked as clean as those bones
we saw in the cemetery." At this I looked
about me, and saw that the whole place was
warming with ants; and, indeed, close to me
lay the skeleton of a large bird, which looked
as if it had been prepared for an anatomical
museum, so well was it cleared. I had to creep
some distance under the scarp of the mountain
before I found a place where I could rest my
weary limbs. The view was enchanting, but
my satisfaction was somewhat marred by the
uncomfortable idea that a slip would send me
headlong down the side of the hill, which,
where I was sitting, was almost perpendicular.

Meantime Pedro the guide had been trying
at various points to clamber up the scarped
crest of the mountain, to find the cave he had
undertaken to show us. "Are you certain that
you have brought us to the right place?"  "I
am certain," said he, with a rueful look, "that
the cave was here; but where it is now, the
blessed Virgin alone knows!" In short, after
nearly breaking our necks, we were forced to
come to the disagreeable conclusion that our
friend Pedro knew nothing at all about the cave,
and that the best thing we could do was to
return to Valencia and make another attempt
under better guidance.

On telling our failure that night to some
German friends, G., a fine active young fellow
who had been a sailor, undertook to pilot me to
the cave next day, though he said he had not
been there for years. This time I resolved to
take Juan with me; and, with a lively recollection
of the dense jungle we had gone through in
our late expedition, I made up my mind to carry
my revolver, by way of a "caution to snakes."

We started next day, long before the sun was
up, and soon got past the cemetery, and turned
our horses towards the mountains, but struck
along the side of a ravine nearer the town than
the ravine we had before visited. Here, the jungle
was thinner, and we got on fast, until, finding the
ground growing steep and rocky, we dismounted
and clambered up about two hundred feet, when
we suddenly beheld the cavern yawning above.
Its mouth was at least thirty feet in diameter,
with a very scarped and slippery entrance, after
surmounting which we found ourselves on a sort
of platform. This portal of the cave was like
a great room, which had, on the right as we
entered, a huge window, from which there was
a lovely view of the valley up to the lake. To
the left of the entrance was another platform,
ten feet above that on which we stood, while
facing the entrance was a long gallery or
tunnel in the rock, very lofty, but narrow, and
sloping upward at an angle of thirty degrees.
At the end of this gallery, the light appeared,
and we could see the festoons of creepers that
hung down over the outlet. But in the centre part
the gallery was dark. Its dimness and narrowness
made it seem of immense length, though
probably it did not much exceed a hundred feet.

Alter resting and smoking our cigars, I told
Juan, as he had much the longest reach of
the party, to try to mount the second
platform, and see what was to be seen. After
two or three attempts, in which he bruised his
shins considerably, Juan gave up the enterprise,
observing, that he was too tall to play the
monkey, and too heavy to go up a rock, birds'-