The afternoon was getting on when the exploring party entered the smaller boat and had it rowed out into the stream a short distance from the centre of the rock city, just facing the spot where the terraces were grotesquely carved; and as they minutely examined the partly natural, partly sculptured place, they were more than ever impressed by the excellence of the workmanship. It must have been the work of many, many years, perhaps of generations, of the people who had lavished so much skilful toil on that centre, which was about a couple of hundred feet in width, and rose up terrace above terrace six or seven hundred feet before the plain uncarved rock was reached, in whose clefts tree, shrub, and creeper grew abundantly for a similar distance, while to right and left the cell-like windows right up to the top of the canon finished off as before intimated, something like the crenellations on the top of a Norman castle. "It must have been magnificent at one time," said Sir Humphrey. "I wish I were clever with my pencil, so as to be able to reproduce all this on paper. These ornamentations are grotesque and horrible, but wonderfully carved, and the variety of the figures is marvellous." "Hadn't we better row close in?" said Briscoe, who seemed impatient, and the men took to their oars till the strong rock wall was reached and the boat drawn along by one of the men with a boat-hook from end to end and back, without a sign of any way up being found. There they were in the deep water, which glided along at the foot of a blank, carefully smoothed-away wall of rock, perfectly perpendicular, and, save where it was dotted here and there with mossy growth, offering not the slightest foot- or hand-hold. "Why, it must be fully fifty feet high to that carved coping-like projection," said Brace. "Yes, about that," said Briscoe, with a sigh of disappointment. "Here, I'd give a hundred dollars for the loan of a ladder that we could plant down here in the water and would reach to the top." "It would take a long one," said Brace, laughing. "I wonder how deep it is." "Ah, let's try," said Briscoe. "Here, hand one of those fishing-lines and a lead out of the locker, Lynton." This was well within the second mate's province, and the next minute he had the heaviest lead at the end of a line, dropped it over the side, and let it run down as fast as he could unwind. "I say: it's deep," he said, as the line ran over the boat's gunwale; and he said so again and again, till the winder was empty and the lead not yet at the bottom. "How long is that line?" said Brace, in astonishment. "One hundred yards, gentlemen," said Lynton loudly. "Shall I have it wound up again?" "Yes," said Sir Humphrey. "We must try and find bottom some other time. The river must be of a terrific depth."