The guides are particular, on entering the caves with a large party, to beg them to keep together, as it would be impossible for a person to find his own way out of the labyrinth of passages, chambers, etc. Two gentlemen of a party made a bet that they would accomplish the feat, and taking their opportunity, slipped away from their party, without the guides being aware of their absence, and it was not until late in the evening that the other party to the wager remarked that those two foolhardy fellows had not found their way out of the cavern. This coming to the ears of the guide, he exclaimed, "Then they are dead men!" Nevertheless, they went in full force to do everything that was possible to find them, but spent the night in vain searches. Sometimes they came upon their track in the soft dust, then lost it again.

On the following day the search was renewed by the guide who had escorted the party, and his description of the finding of one of the gentlemen was truly horrible: "It was the most tarnation cutting up job I ever had in my life," said the guide. "We are not much of cowards, we guides-we get accustomed to awfulness down in the bowels of the earth; but when that critter's shrieks first came on my ear, I just shivered all over, and my feet rooted to the ground-not that I did not wish to save him, the poor devil, but

VOL. II.

20

I got an idea that that shriek came right straight from hell, and no mistake, and I had no fancy to go there before I was sent for! Wall, when I had wiped my brow and taken a drink, I went on in the direction of the sound, for it came every now and again, the echoes making like fifty devils instead of one. I found him sooner than I expected; he was a sight to behold; he flew at me like a tiger; he clutched me, and pulled me, and wrestled with me, yelling and howling like a wild beast. I thought he would have torn me to pieces. I should not have known him again for the same gentleman. His eyes glared, his mouth was foaming, and his hair on end, his clothes all torn and covered with dust. He was a real raving maniac, and so he remained, as far as I know. The work I had to get him out of that cave! He would stand stock still, and shake all over, then suddenly clutch at me again. I was the stronger man of the two, and he was weak from long fasting, or I never should have got him out. The doctor said he was fright stricken."

And this was the case, as they thought, with the other poor fellow, who was not found for weeks, it having been conjectured that he had fallen down a hole. One of the guides, making some new exploration, discovered him sitting down, no sign of decomposition having taken

place, and no sign of his having died of starvation, for a piece of biscuit was found in his pocket. He was supposed to have died of terror, the terrible darkness working upon the nervous system, and the hopelessness of penetrating it making the minutes appear hours. A guide, who had once been lost there himself for some twenty hours, said he never could believe that he had not been there for several days.

NE of the principal fallacies of which a stranger has to disabuse his mind is that "superior accommodation,” under any circumstances, is obtainable in America; though it be promised to him, in every shape and form, by public advertisement and private information. It is one favourite practice of the Americans to recommend a stranger to "the best hotel in the place, where you will get superior accommodation." They consider, then, that they have conferred an obligation which you would find it difficult to repay on the other side of the Atlantic. All the hotels advertise 'superior accommodation," and the railways assert that you will find it in their cars; even the stages have the audacity to put "superior accommodation" on their way-bills, and invite you to travel forty miles, in a broiling sun or deluging rain, upon a tea-tray on wheels (but not

japanned), with a rail across it for a seat. This is their idea of "accommodation."

"We shall be burnt to cinders," I remarked to the "coloured gentleman" in charge of the vehicle, termed by courtesy thermometer marked 110°.

a stage." The

"I'll accommodate you with an umbrella," he replied.

"And pray who is to hold it for forty miles ?"

I asked. He shook his head.

"It is the only accommodation we can offer you.

Needless to say, we declined, in this instance, the "superior accommodation," and were able, subsequently, to find water-transit, always a far more agreeable mode of travelling in America than by stage. For anywhere except on board the steamer, "accommodation" is a word less understood than any other in other in "Johnson."

In the hotels you are sometimes accommodated with a bell in your room; sometimes the chambermaid accommodates you with towels, water, or a drinking-glass, and sometimes she does not. Then you have to accommodate yourself to circumstances, by going in search of them through a quarter of a mile of passages. Sometimes the cockroaches accommodate themselves by running over your bed and investigating whatever you may have, in cup or glass,