in modern houses.

We were compelled every quarter of an hour or thereabouts to sit down in
order to rest our legs. Our calves ached. We then seated ourselves on
some projecting rock with our legs hanging over, and gossiped while we
ate a mouthful--drinking still from the pleasantly warm running stream
which had not deserted us.

It is scarcely necessary to say that in this curiously shaped fissure
the Hansbach had become a cascade to the detriment of its size. It was
still, however, sufficient, and more, for our wants. Besides we knew
that, as soon as the declivity ceased to be so abrupt, the stream must
resume its peaceful course. At this moment it reminded me of my uncle,
his impatience and rage, while when it flowed more peacefully, I
pictured to myself the placidity of the Icelandic guide.

During the whole of two days, the sixth and seventh of July, we followed
the extraordinary spiral staircase of the fissure, penetrating two
leagues farther into the crust of the earth, which put us five leagues
below the level of the sea. On the eighth, however, at twelve o'clock in
the day, the fissure suddenly assumed a much more gentle slope still
trending in a southeast direction.

The road now became comparatively easy, and at the same time dreadfully
monotonous. It would have been difficult for matters to have turned out
otherwise. Our peculiar journey had no chance of being diversified by
landscape and scenery. At all events, such was my idea.

At length, on Wednesday the fifteenth, we were actually seven leagues
(twenty-one miles) below the surface of the earth, and fifty leagues
distant from the mountain of Sneffels. Though, if the truth be told, we
were very tired, our health had resisted all suffering, and was in a
most satisfactory state. Our traveler's box of medicaments had not even
been opened.

My uncle was careful to note every hour the indications of the compass,
of the manometer, and of the thermometer, all which he afterwards
published in his elaborate philosophical and scientific account of our
remarkable voyage. He was therefore able to give an exact relation of
the situation. When, therefore, he informed me that we were fifty
leagues in a horizontal direction distant from our starting point, I
could not suppress a loud exclamation.

"What is the matter now?" cried my uncle.

"Nothing very important, only an idea has entered my head," was my
reply.

"Well, out with it, My boy."

"It is my opin