We were now drawing nigh to the final tug of war. A quarter of an hour of indescribable wriggling brought us to a narrow and lofty rift, into which as many of the party as it would accommodate wedged themselves, right over the second vertical drop. Much the same tactics were resorted to here, save that, instead of a fixed pulley, each man in turn had a large steel pulley belted to him, through which ran 200 feet of rope, one end fixed to a wedged boulder beneath us, the other end in the hands of the hauling party. A 90-foot manilla was, as before, allowed to hang free, as a guide-rope, over the crags, and enabled each man to do something for himself and assist those above. Only four men essayed this last descent. The gigantic cavity into which we now dropped is one of the most savage and impressive things it has ever been my lot to see. At the top, over the heads of the hauling party, it runs up into the rocky mass of the hill as a vertical chimney, under the mouth of which lay what appeared to be a deep black pit. We alighted, one by one, on a sloping shelf that traversed the side of the cavity at a considerable height. Creeping along this ledge, we saw at the end of it a huge cavernous opening descending into darkness, with a mighty rock wedged across it like a bridge. The black, gaunt walls on each side of us were craggy and rifted; their surfaces glistened with streaming water. Our ledge ending abruptly, we dropped, hand over hand, on the rope, to the edge of a large pothole, into which a stream was rushing. At this point a tunnel goes off to the left, and, as it had not been explored, I was asked by Mr. Balch to proceed down it. Two of us crept and clambered and slid down a very dirty watercourse, till, at a distance of perhaps 50 yards, we found ourselves atop of a high clay bank, closely overhung by rocks, with a stream rumbling along to the south-south-west. I got within 10 feet of the water, but without a rope to get us up again we would not venture farther. We had now been in the cave nine and a half hours, and were too much fatigued to undertake new work. It was ascertained, beyond reasonable doubt, that a fine series of potholes that exist in the continuation of the great cavity must drain into the stream just discovered. Beyond those potholes, to pass which involves much hard work, is another cavity, and beyond that what?--at present no one can tell. All we know is, that the water finds its way ultimately into the vast reservoirs inside Wookey Hole; but whether there are other vast cavities, or merely narrow crevices and impassable clefts between, is a question that will require labours almost Herculean to solve.