"Miss S., who has a great taste for costuming, wound her plaid shawl about her shoulders, turbaned her head with a green veil, swung her lamp upon a stick which she rested upon her shoulder, and then threw herself upon a rock in a most picturesque attitude. The guide took a lower seat, and his dirty tin cup, swung across his breast, looked like an ornament as the light struck it; his swarthy face was bright, and I wondered what our friends at home would give for a picture. "One of these elliptical halls has its ceiling immensely far off, and of the deepest black, until our feeble little lights strike upon innumerable points, when it shines forth like a dark starlight night. The stars are faint, but they look so exceedingly like the heavens that one easily forgets that it is not reality. "The guide asked us to be seated, while he went behind down a descent with the lights, to show us the creeping over of the shadows of the rocks, as if a dark cloud passed over the starlit vault. The black cloud crept on and on as the guide descended, until a fear came over us, and we cried out together to him to come back, not to leave us in total darkness. He begged that he might go still lower and show us entire darkness, but we would not permit it. "Guin's Dome. What the name means I can't say. The guide tells you to pause in your scrambling over loose stones and muddy soil,--which you are always willing to do,--and to put your head through a circular aperture, and to look up while he lights the Bengal light; you obey, and look up upon columns of fluted, snowy whiteness; he tells you to look down, and you follow the same pillars down--up to heights which the light cannot climb, down to depths on which it cannot fall. "You shudder as you look up, and you shudder as you look down. Indeed, the march of the cave is a series of shudders. Geologists may enjoy it, a large party may be merry in it; but if the 'underground railroad' of the slaves is of that kind, I should rather remain a slave than undertake a runaway trip! "May 18. To-day we retraced our steps from Nashville to Chattanooga. It had been raining nearly all night, and we found, when not far from the latter place, that the streams were pouring down from the high lands upon the car-track, so that we came through rivers. When we dashed into the dark tunnel it was darker than ever from the darkness of the day, and it seemed to me that the darkness pressed upon me. I am sure I should keep my senses a very little while if I were confined in a dark place. "As we came out of the tunnel, the water from the hill above dashed upon the cars; and although it did not break the panes of glass, it forced its way through and sprinkled us. "The route, with all its terrors, is beautiful, and the trees are now much finer than they were ten days ago.