Standing on the outside, the appearance of some of the company at the inner end of the cave was truly picturesque, they being diminished on the eye to half their size, and removed to three times their real distance.
On advancing twenty paces within, the path or aisle gradually ascending has risen to the level of the [248] galleries, and from thence to the end is a spacious apartment of the whole breadth, ascending until it meets the rocky vault, which is of bluish grey limestone. Twelve paces from the end is a fissure in the vault, to which is fixed a notched pole, to serve for a ladder, but the cavity has the appearance of nothing more than a natural cleft in the rock, large enough to admit the entrance of a man, and perhaps extending some little distance sloping upwards.[1]
There is a perpendicular rocky bluff, just opposite the lower end of Cave island, about two hundred yards above the cave, where the river narrows to less than half a mile wide, forming a fine situation for a fortification.
CHAPTER XLII
Half a mile below the Rocking cave, we stopped at Perkins's finely situated farm, where we feasted on some good buttermilk, and bought some eggs, but on demanding the price, and being asked by Mrs. Perkins, with an unblushing face, four times as much as we had hitherto paid for the first article, and twice as much as had ever been demanded for the second, we left the eggs with her, and paid her for the buttermilk, not however without telling her, how
- ↑ This is now known as Cave-in-Rock, from a large cave (Hardin County, Illinois) in which a band of robbers hid themselves (1801)—Ed.
