heart, knowing that she was
betrothed to a chief of higher rank and greater power, but now, ... no
time was to be lost; he flew to her abode ... declared himself her
deliverer if she would trust to his honour.... Soon her consenting hand
was clasped in his: the shades of evening favoured their escape ... till
her lover had brought a small canoe to a lonely part of the beach. In
this they speedily embarked.... They soon arrived at the rock, he leaped
into the water, and she, instructed by him, followed close after; they
rose into the cavern, and rested from their fatigue, partaking of some
refreshments which he had brought there for himself...." Here she
remained, visited from time to time by her more fortunate Leander, until
he was enabled to carry her off to the Fiji islands, where they dwelt
till the death of the tyrant, when they returned to Vavaoo, "and lived
long in peace and happiness."]

[404] {631} This may seem too minute for the general outline (in
Mariner's Account) from which it is taken. But few men have travelled
without seeing something of the kind--on _land_, that is. Without
adverting to Ellora, in Mungo Park's last journal, he mentions having
met with a rock or mountain so exactly resembling a Gothic cathedral,
that only minute inspection could convince him that it was a work of
nature.

[Ellora, a village in the Nizam's dominions, is thirteen miles
north-west of Aurangabad. "It is famous for its rock-caves and temples.
The chief building, called the kailas, ... is a great monolithic temple,
isolated from surrounding rock, and carved outside as well as in.... It
is said to have been built about the eighth century by Raja Edu of
Ellichpur."--Hunter's _Imperial Gazetteer of India_, 1885, iv. 348-351.
The passage in Mungo Park's _Journal of a Mission to the Interior of
Africa_, 1815, p. 75, runs thus: "June 24th [1805],--Left Sullo, and
travelled through a country beautiful beyond imagination, with all the
possible diversities of _rock_, sometimes towering up like ruined
castles, spires, pyramids, etc. We passed one place so like a ruined
Gothic abbey, that we halted a little, before we could satisfy ourselves
that the niches, windows, etc., were all natural rock."]

[405] [Byron's quadrisyllable was, probably, a poetic licence. There is,
however, an obsolete plural, _stalactitae_, to be found in the works of
John Woodward, M.D., _Fossils of England_, 1729, i. 155.]

[fs] {632} _Where Love and Torquil