s seventy-four feet.
From the entrance the passage, for four or five yards, slopes downwards
into the hill; it then runs horizontally the length of sixty-three feet
from the entrance, when it changes its direction at right angles to the
westward for a distance of eleven feet; when it ends with the solid rock.
It is regularly from three feet four inches to three feet six inches wide,
and about seven feet high, the ceiling being somewhat circular. The floor
is the rock cut square. The time and labour must have been great to cut
this passage, as not more than one man could conveniently quarry the rock
at the same time. It might have been supposed that this was a level to a
mine, as copper has been worked in this range farther eastward; but the
passage does not follow any vein, but cuts across all the strata, and keeps
a straight line, till it turns westward, and then in another straight line;
and the floors, sides, and roof are all made quite regular and even with a
pickaxe or a hammer. There does not appear to have been at any time any
other habitation than the shepherd's house, and another cottage a little
lower down the stream, in the neighbourhood. The discovery of this cavern
recalled to the recollection of myself, and some of my family, that a few
years ago, in cutting a road through the rock into a whinstone quarry,
about four miles south of Braidshawrigg, near a mill, we had cut across the
east end of a passage somewhat similar to the one before mentioned, but
running east and west; that we had cleared it out for a short way, but as
it then went under a corner of one of the houses belonging to the mill, we
stopped, for fear of bringing down the building, as this passage, though
cut out of the solid rock, was not a mine, but had been worked to the
surface; and, if it ever had been used for purposes of sepulture, must have
been roofed with flagstones, and then covered with earth like other Picts'
houses. But these roof-stones must have been carried away, and the whole
trench was filled with rubbish, and all trace of it on the surface was
obliterated. This passage we have lately opened, and cleared out. To the
westward it passes into the adjoining water-mill, which is itself in great
part formed by excavation of the rock; and the east wall of the upper part
of the mill is arched over the passage. Beyond the west wall of the mill
which adjoins the stream, there is a continuation of the trench through the
rock down to the