On the day when he mysteriously disappeared he had come upon a great hollow, or hole, of about sixty yards in diameter, which appeared to descend into the very depths of the earth. The sides of the hollow sloped towards the centre, and were covered with bushes. Noting this, our romantic friend resolved to explore the spot. He descended cautiously till he came to a place where the hole had narrowed to about twenty feet in diameter, and the herbage ceased because of the absence of the earth to sustain it. Filled with eager curiosity, the reckless man held on to a branch and stretched his head over the edge of the hole. He saw nothing but blackness. He soon felt something, however, for the branch suddenly broke off, and John went headlong down into that hole! Then and there he would certainly have paid for his curiosity with his life, had not a mass of earth, a few feet further down, and against which he struck, broken his fall in some measure, and shunted him off to the opposite wall of the rock. This latter proved to be a slope so steep that it let him slide, like lightning, to the bottom, a depth of about thirty feet or more, where he was stopped with such violence that he lay stunned for a considerable time. Recovering, he found that no bones were broken, and that, indeed, he was not much damaged considering the violence of the fall; but the satisfaction and thankfulness that this undoubtedly caused him were diminished by the fact that he was in total darkness, and at the bottom of a hole of unknown depth. A feeling of horror rushed over him at the thought of being thus, as it were, buried alive. Springing up, he felt all round the walls of his prison for some inequalities or projections, by which he might climb out, but none such could he find. The place was like a well of not more than about ten feet wide, with smooth rocky sides, which were almost perpendicular as far up as he could reach. On looking upward, he could see the mouth of the hole, through which he had fallen, glimmering like a little star above him.