I hardly know in what tense to speak of those excavations, not being
aware in what state they are at present. A strange place it is, or was.
Vaulted passages cut out of the solid rock; arches thrown up by
craftmen's hands, beautiful in proportion and elegant in form, but
supporting nothing. Tunnels formed here--deep pits there. Yawning
gulfs, where the fetid, stagnant waters threw up their baneful odours.
Here the work is finished off, as if the mason had laboured with
consummate skill to complete his work, so that all the world might see
and admire, although no human eyes, save those of the master's, would
ever be set upon it. Here lies the ponderous stone as it fell after the
upheaving blast had dislodged it from its bed; and there, vaulted over,
is a gulf that makes the brain dizzy, and strikes us with terror as we
look down into it. Now we see an arch, fit to bridge a mountain torrent;
and in another step or two we meet another, only fit to span a simple
brook. Tiers of passages are met with, as dangerous to enter as they are
strange to look at. It must ever be a matter of regret that after Mr.
Williamson's death, some one able to make an accurate survey of the
property did not go through and describe it, because it has been greatly
changed since then by the accumulations of rubbish that have been brought
to every part of it. All the most elaborate portions of the excavations
have been entirely closed up. In one section of the ground (that near
Grinfield-street), where there was of late years a joiner's shop, the
ground was completely undermined in galleries and passages, one over the
other, constituting a subterranean labyrinth of the most intricate
design. Near here also was a deep gulf, in the wall sides of which were
two houses completely excavated out of the solid rock, each having four
rooms of tolerable dimensions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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