which we crawled
on our hands and knees. With the toil and the smoke of the torches the
heat was almost beyond endurance. The passage enlarged and again
contracted, descending steeply, and so low that the shoulders almost
touched the roof. This opened upon a great chasm at one side, and
beyond we came to another perpendicular hole, which we descended by
steps cut in the rock. From this there was another low, crawling
passage, and, almost stifled with heat and smoke, we came out into a
small opening, in which was a basin of water, being the well. The place
was crowded with Indians filling their calabashes, and they started at
the sight of our smoky white faces as if El Demonio had descended among
them. It was, doubtless, the first time that the feet of a white man
had ever reached this well.

On returning we measured the distance. Doctor Cabot going before with a
line of about a hundred feet, in the wild and broken passages being
soon out of sight, and sometimes out of hearing. I followed, with an
Indian winding up the line, while I made notes. I had two Indians with
long bundles of lighted sticks, who, whenever I stopped to write,
either held them so far off as to be of no use, or else thrust them
into my face, blinding the eyes with smoke and scorching the skin. I
was dripping as if in a vapour-bath; my face and hands were black with
smoke and incrusted with dirt; large drops of sweat fell upon my book,
which, with the dirt from my hands, matted the leaves together, so that
my notes are almost useless. They were, no doubt, imperfect, but I do
not believe that, with the most accurate details, it is possible to
convey a true idea of the character of this cave, with its deep holes
and passages through a bed of solid rock, and the strange scene
presented by the Indians, with torches and calabashes, unmurmuring and
uncomplaining, at their daily task of seeking, deep in the bowels of
the earth, one of the great elements of life.

The distance, as we traversed it, with its ladders, ascents and
descents, winding and crawling passages, seemed a full half league, as
represented by the Indians. By measurement it was not quite fifteen
hundred feet, which is about equal to the length of the Park fronting
on Broadway. The perpendicular depth to the water I am not able to
give, but some idea may be formed of these passages from the fact that
the Indians did not carry their calabashes on their shoulders, because,
with the body bent,