The first thing that the cave explorer, eager for discovery, has to learn, is not to lose himself. In many cases no special precautions are necessary, but if there are numerous bifurcations, specific measures must be adopted. Often it is sufficient to station a hurricane lamp or a good-sized candle at the cross roads; a surer method, but one that is rather troublesome, is to unreel a thread as we advance. Such a cavern as Goatchurch, in Burrington Combe, Somerset, is a perplexing maze, where one loses one's bearings completely two minutes after looking at the compass. The mass of the hill is shivered into innumerable fragments, of giant size. Passages striking off along the fractures often lead one back imperceptibly to the point of divergence. At the Eastwater Cavern, in the same district, after I had already gone four times through the enormous aggregation of shattered rocks at the top, where a human body is like a beetle in a heap of macadam, I tried in vain to make my way out without using the life-line. Although there is but 100 feet of it, one takes half an hour to get through. The original explorers spent a much longer time in discovering a practicable route. For my own part, I was lost in a few moments, and compelled to return. The imprudence of two men in the Bagshawe Cavern, in Derbyshire, who went too far in advance in their anxiety to be discoverers, led to an uncomfortable experience both for them and for their rescuers. This very extensive cavern has a number of ramifications. The two men who were following reached a distant and unexplored part of the cave, only to find that they had missed their comrades, the sand and clay on the cave floor being still perfectly smooth and untrodden. They failed to discover the wanderers in the neighbouring passages, and lost their own way for a time before they got back, through the winding tunnels, low-roofed fissures, and deep canals, crawling, scrambling, and wading breast-deep through icy water, to the place where they had parted. They hoped the truants had found their way back, but there was no sign of them, and preparations had to be made for a second journey. After a fatiguing quest, that lasted several hours, they found the missing adventurers in a remote part of the cavern, nursing their last shred of candle and waiting to be rescued. The experiences of some youthful explorers in Wookey Hole, who found themselves on dangerous ground and all their matches gone, are described on another page.