I soon gave up all hope of ever reaching the top, but in examining the rock I found at its base a great cavern, so high and wide that a very large building might have stood in it, with plenty of room to spare. The sides and roof sparkled with crystals of all hues, and were singularly and picturesquely variegated with differently colored veins running through them; and, as the cave opened toward the east, with a large clear space in front of it, nothing could have been more splendid than when the morning sun shone full into the vast chamber and lighted it up with dazzling brilliancy. In that chamber I made my humble home. Near one of the streams that flowed over the precipice into the lake, grew several species of very tall grasses, with great bushy heads of long silky fibers that adorned and protected their flowers and fruit. Of these fine strong threads I made a hammock, which I suspended from a strong frame bound together with these tough fibers, placing it a few feet back from the mouth of the cavern. Thus, I had an excellent bed, and if I should need covering there were plenty of palm-leaves at hand for the purpose. But in that torrid climate there was little need of extra protection; the air of the cavern was of just that delightful coolness which refreshes but does not chill. Now, imagine me waking in the morning just as the dawn tinted the rosy east, refreshed with sweet slumbers and rejoicing to behold the light, rocking myself gently in my pretty hammock, and hailing the uprising sun with a merry song,--and would you not suppose there was one happy man in this great world? While the day was yet young I would take a bath in the clear, soft water of a little stream near by. Then, when all was sparkling and bright in my humble house, I would partake with keen appetite of the precious fruits of my unlimited and self-producing garden. In the neighboring streams were many kinds of fishes, some of which I knew to be very good eating, and I could have caught and eaten as many birds as I wished; but the fruits and nuts were so plentiful, and of so many different sorts, that I cared for, and, indeed, needed, no other kind of food. Thus, several months passed away, and I was not weary of this paradise. There was enough to occupy my mind in the examination of the structure and mode of growth of a vast number of species of plants. Their flowering, their fruitage, and their decay offered a boundless field for thought, and kept up a never-flagging interest. For the first four months the sun traced his course through the heavens to the north of me; I knew, therefore, that I was almost immediately under the equator. For several days at the end of the four months, the sun rose directly in the east, passing through the sky in a line dividing it almost exactly into halves north and south. After that, for six months, I had the great luminary to the south of me.