those of gloom. In truth they
recalled gladdening recollections of similar scenes in a distant and far
different land. After we had been advancing for several hours through
passages always narrow, often obstructed and difficult, I saw at a
little distance on our right a narrow opening between two high wooded
precipices. All within seemed darkness and mystery. In the mood in which
I found myself something strongly impelled me to enter. Passing over the
intervening space I guided my horse through the rocky portal, and as
I did so instinctively drew the covering from my rifle, half expecting
that some unknown evil lay in ambush within those dreary recesses. The
place was shut in among tall cliffs, and so deeply shadowed by a host
of old pine trees that, though the sun shone bright on the side of the
mountain, nothing but a dim twilight could penetrate within. As far as
I could see it had no tenants except a few hawks and owls, who, dismayed
at my intrusion, flapped hoarsely away among the shaggy branches. I
moved forward, determined to explore the mystery to the bottom, and soon
became involved among the pines. The genius of the place exercised
a strange influence upon my mind. Its faculties were stimulated into
extraordinary activity, and as I passed along many half-forgotten
incidents, and the images of persons and things far distant, rose
rapidly before me with surprising distinctness. In that perilous
wilderness, eight hundred miles removed beyond the faintest vestige
of civilization, the scenes of another hemisphere, the seat of ancient
refinement, passed before me more like a succession of vivid paintings
than any mere dreams of the fancy. I saw the church of St. Peter's
illumined on the evening of Easter Day, the whole majestic pile, from
the cross to the foundation stone, penciled in fire and shedding a
radiance, like the serene light of the moon, on the sea of upturned
faces below. I saw the peak of Mount Etna towering above its inky mantle
of clouds and lightly curling its wreaths of milk-white smoke against
the soft sky flushed with the Sicilian sunset. I saw also the gloomy
vaulted passages and the narrow cells of the Passionist convent where
I once had sojourned for a few days with the fanatical monks, its pale,
stern inmates in their robes of black, and the grated window from whence
I could look out, a forbidden indulgence, upon the melancholy Coliseum
and the crumbling ruins of the Eternal City. The mighty gl