-like roof. An
aperture in the midst let in the light of heaven; but this was overgrown
with brambles and underwood, which acted as a veil, obscuring the day, and
giving a solemn religious hue to the apartment. It was spacious, and nearly
circular, with a raised seat of stone, about the size of a Grecian couch,
at one end. The only sign that life had been here, was the perfect
snow-white skeleton of a goat, which had probably not perceived the opening
as it grazed on the hill above, and had fallen headlong. Ages perhaps had
elapsed since this catastrophe; and the ruin it had made above, had been
repaired by the growth of vegetation during many hundred summers.

The rest of the furniture of the cavern consisted of piles of leaves,
fragments of bark, and a white filmy substance, resembling the inner part
of the green hood which shelters the grain of the unripe Indian corn. We
were fatigued by our struggles to attain this point, and seated ourselves
on the rocky couch, while the sounds of tinkling sheep-bells, and shout of
shepherd-boy, reached us from above.

At length my friend, who had taken up some of the leaves strewed about,
exclaimed, "This is the Sibyl's cave; these are Sibylline leaves." On
examination, we found that all the leaves, bark, and other substances, were
traced with written characters. What appeared to us more astonishing, was
that these writings were expressed in various languages: some unknown to my
companion, ancient Chaldee, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, old as the
Pyramids. Stranger still, some were in modern dialects, English and
Italian. We could make out little by the dim light, but they seemed to
contain prophecies, detailed relations of events but lately passed; names,
now well known, but of modern date; and often exclamations of exultation or
woe, of victory or defeat, were traced on their thin scant pages. This was
certainly the Sibyl's Cave; not indeed exactly as Virgil describes it, but
the whole of this land had been so convulsed by earthquake and volcano,
that the change was not wonderful, though the traces of ruin were effaced
by time; and we probably owed the preservation of these leaves, to the
accident which had closed the mouth of the cavern, and the swift-growing
vegetation which had rendered its sole opening impervious to the storm. We
made a hasty selection of such of the leaves, whose writing one at least of
us could understand; and then, laden with our treasure, we bade adieu to