The actual grotto, where fifty-two years ago the little Bernadette saw her visions of the Blessed Mary, lies now about a hundred yards from the river's edge, along which a palisaded embankment has been built, that is apt however, after sudden storms, to be pretty often under water. It is really a cave set in a large rock around which, one above the other, have since been built three churches, the topmost, with its tall and slender spire, being perhaps the most prominent landmark for a good many miles around. With its walls polished by the elbows and fingers of countless thousands of pilgrims, this little cavern contains an altar before which, in the open air, are ranged several rows of seats for worshippers at the shrine, and where, as I afterwards learned from a disappointed Irish priest, it is considered a very special privilege to say Mass. Next to the grotto are the baths, where the sick are immersed, and from which bottles of the holy water can be carried away to all parts of the world; and to the left and above this is the great church, the lowest and largest of the three that now surmount the rock. The entrance to this church stands upon a broad terrace above the immense open amphitheatre, about which, in a circle some half a mile in circumference, gather the sick people and their helpers and relations for the afternoon passing of the Host. It is at this ceremony that the majority of the miracles take place, of which, I suppose, the crutches, splints, spinal jackets, and other surgical appliances that hang rusting among the wild geraniums over the entrance to the grotto are to be taken as partial evidences.