Keeping close to the wall of rock on my right, I slowly ascended in what seemed to me a spiral curve. Sometimes I would take a step to the left, to ascertain if I still had a barrier on that side; by which I found that there were many openings in the wall on that side, probably similar to the one through which I had reached this apparently continuous passage. Up, up I went, gaining courage though feeling weaker and weaker. Having the wall on my right for so long a time, and seeming to be always ascending, I began to think that I was in a sort of circular honey-combed cavern. It must be borne in mind that my progress was exceedingly slow, consequent upon the necessity of feeling my way, step by step, apprehensive of going over the brink of a precipice in some moment of undue confidence. How many times I lay down to sleep, how many times I rose to continue the task, I cannot tell; but, having been immured so long, without food and without light, I began to feel stealing over me a weariness of exhaustion which required the utmost power of the will to battle. All this time I kept ascending. Suddenly the passage seemed to open wide, and, all at once, a bright light shot into the cavern. For the moment I was blinded; a painful sensation struck me across the brows; but I determined to behold the light at whatever cost. I opened my eyes; and now, the shock of the dazzling brightness having passed away, I saw the most beautiful effect I had ever beheld in my whole life. A ray of sunlight fell in a round spot, bright and warm, on the wall at the left. It entered by a small aperture higher up--in the wall at the right. For a moment I looked around. I stood in a vast, rock-bound chamber--an immense hall--faintly illuminated by reflection from the direct sun-ray which fell upon a vein of quartz, and sparkled, lively with flitting rainbow-colors. I could see the openings in the inner wall, many of them a hundred feet high, nearly all very narrow, and for the most part vertical. On the right, the wall was unbroken, with the exception of the little hole, through which the blessed sunlight streamed, in the pit of a broad, deep, conical sort of depression. Far behind me, I could just make out the mouth of the passage from which I had emerged into this spacious chamber, and before me the opening into another also adjacent to the wall on my right.