No More Learning

It appeared (by guess) to be about forty feet wide in the main part, but
it branched off, on one side, in two narrower portions. The medium
height seemed also about forty feet. The roof was hung with stalactites
in a very curious way, resembling, upon a cursory view, the Gothic
arches and ornaments of an old church. " According to one of the
matabooles present, the entire family of a certain chief had, in former
times, been condemned to death for conspiring against a rival
tyrant--the chief to be taken out to sea and drowned, the rest of the
family to be massacred. One of the chiefs daughters was a beautiful
girl, to whom the youth who discovered the cave was attached. "He had
long been enamoured of this young maiden, but had never dared to make
her acquainted with the soft emotions of his heart, knowing that she was
betrothed to a chief of higher rank and greater power, but now, . . . no
time was to be lost; he flew to her abode . . . declared himself her
deliverer if she would trust to his honour. . . .
Soon her consenting hand
was clasped in his: the shades of evening favoured their escape . . . till
her lover had brought a small canoe to a lonely part of the beach. In
this they speedily embarked. . . . They soon arrived at the rock, he leaped
into the water, and she, instructed by him, followed close after; they
rose into the cavern, and rested from their fatigue, partaking of some
refreshments which he had brought there for himself. . . . " Here she
remained, visited from time to time by her more fortunate Leander, until
he was enabled to carry her off to the Fiji islands, where they dwelt
till the death of the tyrant, when they returned to Vavaoo, "and lived
long in peace and happiness. "]

[404] {631} This may seem too minute for the general outline (in
Mariner's Account) from which it is taken. But few men have travelled
without seeing something of the kind--on _land_, that is. Without
adverting to Ellora, in Mungo Park's last journal, he mentions having
met with a rock or mountain so exactly resembling a Gothic cathedral,
that only minute inspection could convince him that it was a work of
nature.