‘At length we found our way, and, weary and faint, entered the chief city at ten at night; however, much fatigued as I was, I determined to explore the cavern as long as my lights held out. We now entered the fifth and last avenue from the chief city, which carried us south-east about nine hundred yards, when we entered the fifth city, whose arch covers upwards of four acres of level ground, strewed with broken limestone. Fire beds of uncommon size, with brands of cane lying around them, are interspersed throughout this city. We crossed over to the opposite side, and entered an avenue that carried us east about two hundred and fifty rods; when, finding nothing remarkable in this passage, we turned back, and crossed a massy pile of limestone in the mouth of a large avenue, which I noticed but a few yards from this last-mentioned city as I came out of it. After some difficulty in passing over this mass of limestone, we entered a large avenue, whose walls were the most perfect of any that we had seen, running almost due south for five hundred rods, and very level and straight. When at the end of this avenue, and while I was sketching a plan of the cave, one of my guides, who had been some time groping among the broken stones, called out, requesting me to follow him. I gathered up my papers and compass, and also giving the guide who sat with me orders to remain where he was, until we returned, and moreover to keep his lamp in good order, I followed after the first, who had entered a vertical passage just large enough to admit his body. We continued to step from one stone to another, until at last, after much difficulty, from the smallness of the passage, which is about forty feet in height, we entered upon the side of a chamber eighteen hundred feet in circumference, and whose arch is one hundred and fifty feet high in the centre. After having marked arrows, pointing downwards, upon the slate-stones around the little passage through which we had winded, we walked nearly to the centre of this area. It was past midnight when I entered this chamber of eternal darkness, where “all things are hushed, and nature’s self lies dead.” I must acknowledge I felt a shivering horror at my situation, when, I looked back upon the different avenues through which I had passed, since I entered the cave at eight in the morning; and “at time of night, when church-yards groan,” to be buried several miles in the dark recesses of this awful cavern, the grave, perhaps, of thousands of human beings――gave me no very pleasant emotions. With the guide who was now with me, I took the only avenue leading from this chamber, and traversed it for the distance of a mile in a northerly direction, when my lamps forbade me going any farther, as they were nearly exhausted. The avenue, or passage, was as large as any that we had entered; and how far we might have entered, had our lights held out, is unknown.