e walls and ceiling, you can imagine a
great deal more.

After this we come to the "Gothic Avenue," which would be a very
interesting place to us if we but had a little more time; but we hurry
through it, for the next room we are to visit is called the "Haunted
Chamber!" Every one of us must be very anxious to see anything of that
kind. When we get into it, however, we are very much disappointed. It
is not half so gloomy and dark as the rest of the cave, for here we
are pretty sure to find people, and lights, and signs of life.

Here you may sometimes buy gingerbread and bottled beer, from women
who have stands here for that purpose. It is expected that when
visitors get this far they will be hungry. Sometimes, too, there are
persons who live down here, and spend most of their time in this
chamber. These are invalid people with weak lungs, who think that the
air of the cave is good for them. I do not know whether they are right
or not, but I am sure that they take very gloomy medicine. The only
reason for calling this room the Haunted Chamber is, that the first
explorers of the cave found mummies here.

Who these were when they were alive, no man can say. If they were
Indians, they were very different Indians from those who have lived in
this country since its discovery. They do not make mummies. But all
over our land we find evidences that some race--now extinct--lived
here before the present North American Indian.

Whether the ghosts of any of these mummies walk about in this room. I
cannot say; but as no one ever saw any, or heard any, or knew anybody
who had seen or heard any, I think it is doubtful.

When we leave this room we go down some ladders and over a bridge, and
then we enter what is called the "Labyrinth," where the passage turns
and twists on itself in a very abrupt manner, and where the roof is so
low that all of us, except those who are very short indeed, must stoop
very low. When we get through this passage, which some folks call the
"Path of Humiliation"--for everybody has to bow down, you know--we
come to a spot where the guide says he is going to show us something
through a window.

The window is nothing but a hole broken in a rocky wall; but as we
look through it, and hold the lanterns so that we can see as much as
possible, we perceive that we are gazing down into a deep and enormous
well. They call it the "Bottomless Pit." If we drop bits of burning
paper into this well we can see them fal