rt that the tunnel level rapidly descended, boring deeper and deeper
into the bosom of the earth. Finally, my fingers came into contact
with small fragments of rock strewing the side walls, and I
comprehended I must already be beneath the base of that rounded mound
upon the summit of which the house of Naladi stood. What worried me
most was to what end this tunnel was made. Such vast labor had surely
never been performed without adequate purpose. Besides, completed, the
passage was well cared for. I met frequently in my blind groping with
evidences of comparatively recent labor. Yet for what purpose was it
designed? Where did it lead? To my bewildered judgment the general
trend appeared northward; but that would carry it directly across the
broadest portion of the upper basin. To have an unconcealed entrance
in the centre of that unprotected, open plain would be foreign to
savage nature; while to imagine that such a tunnel as this, from which
a vast amount of earth had been borne upon the backs of workmen, could
extend below the full extent of that valley, was beyond conception.
Besides, the air was light and pure, as sweet to inhale as if it blew
directly upon me from the open sky; itself proof positive that some
opening could not be far distant.

Thus questioning, I groped slowly forward. To one accustomed to living
in the open there is something peculiarly oppressive in being cooped
within the confines of such narrow entries, and being compelled to
reflect upon the immense mass of rock and earth resting above, and
prevented from crushing him down into everlasting silence only by
insignificant props of wood, whose melancholy groaning in the darkness
bore evidence of the vast weight they upheld. There was nothing for me
but to struggle onward, although I do not claim that it was without
quaking heart, or many a start at odd noises echoing and re-echoing
along that grim gallery. It is comparatively easy to be courageous
where the peril is of a nature to which we have long accustomed
ourselves, but many a trained nerve gives way before little ventures
amid the unknown. I am told that soldiers coming to these
colonies--veterans who had faced unflinchingly the flames of
battle--will tremble and shrink like frightened girls at the slightest
sign of a storm at sea; and there was once a famous war-chief of the
Shawnees, who had fought fiercely with tomahawk and knife, yet who fell
dead at the first crash of a fie