ow rocks. We
tried a side-passage to see if it led round this obstacle, but it soon
came to an end. As I stood on the brink of the deep, black, silent
pool, I had a great longing to know what lay beyond; but I had to
content myself with imagining the unrevealed wonders of the cavern. It
would be just possible, by crouching down in a little boat, to pass
under the rock, which is probably no insuperable obstacle. The roof is
just as likely to form a high vault on one side of it as on the other.
The water is the serious obstacle; but it is safe to say, from the
character of the formation, that the deep pool does not extend very
far. A peculiarity of these underground streams of the _causses_ is
that they generally form a chain of pools.

If a shepherd-boy really lost his life in this cavern, he must have
done so by trying to pass the pool, unless he was washed into it by a
sudden rush of water after a heavy storm. It must be confessed that
the spot is calculated to fill one with superstitious dread. The calm
of the deep water into which the stream glides makes it quite easy to
imagine, with the help of the surroundings, that there is an evil
spirit lurking in it--perhaps that of the wicked Pehautier whom the
demons dragged down here. I had another grim thought: Supposing this
water, in obedience to some pressure elsewhere, should rise suddenly
and flood the lower part of the cavern! There is no knowing what
tricks water may play in this fantastic region, where the tendency of
rivers is to flow underground, and where one gallery may be connected
with a ramification of water-courses extending over many miles of
country, and with reservoirs which empty themselves periodically by
means of natural syphons. There is a world full of marvels under the
_causses_ of the Lot, the Aveyron, and the Lozere; but although much
more will be known about it, a vast deal will remain for ever hidden
from man.

I will now return to my wayfaring across the Causse de Gramat in the
early summer.

I had passed through the village of Alvignac--a little watering-place
that draws all the profit it can from a ferruginous spring which rises
at Miers hard by, but otherwise uninteresting, and had left on my
right the village of Thegra, where the troubadour Hugues de St. Cyr
was born, when suddenly the landscape struck me with the sentiment of
England. For some hours I had been walking chiefly over the stony
_causse_, searching for a so-called castle t