For a little while a dull, continuous sound had told us that we were approaching a waterfall. Suddenly the valley narrowed into a wild and lonely gorge. On the left stood a high wall of rock overgrown with moss; oaks and firs mixed with ivy and straggling brushwood rose one above the other in every crevice till they reached the top of the cliff, throwing a mysterious shade on to the deeper water at the foot of the rocks. A hundred paces in front of us, the water boiled and foamed, and then disappeared all at once, and the broken line of the stream stood out in a veil of white spray, against a distant background of vague foliage. On our right, the bank opposite to the cliff had only a narrow margin of sloping meadow, fringed with the sombre velvet of the wooded hills. "Land, Alain," said the young Creole. Alain moored the boat to a willow. "Now, sir," she said, stepping lightly on to grass, "aren’t you overcome? Aren’t you troubled, petrified, thunderstruck? You ought to be, for this is supposed to be a very pretty place. I like it because it is always fresh and cool. But follow me through the woods—if you are not too much afraid—and I will show you the famous stones." Bright, alert, and gay as I had never seen her before, Mlle. Marguerite crossed the fields with a bounding step, and took a path which led along the hills to the forest. Alain and I followed in Indian file. After a few minutes’ quick walking our guide stopped and seemed to hesitate, and looked about her for a moment. Then, deliberately separating two interlaced branches, she left the beaten track and plunged into the undergrowth. It was very difficult to make way through the thicket of strong young oaks whose slanting stems and twisted branches were knotted together as closely as Robinson Crusoe’s palisade. At least Alain and I, bent double, advanced very slowly, catching our heads against something at every step, and at each of our clumsy movements bringing down a shower of dew upon us. But Mlle. Marguerite, with the greater dexterity and the catlike suppleness of her sex, slipped without any apparent effort through the meshes of the labyrinth, laughing at our sufferings, and carelessly letting the branches spring back after her into our faces. At last we reached a narrow glade on the top of the hill. There, not without emotion, I saw the dark and monstrous table of stone supported by five or six huge blocks half sunk in the earth, forming a cavern full of sacred horror. At first sight this perfect monument of a time almost fabulous, and of a primitive religion, has an aspect of eternal verity and of a real mysterious presence, that takes hold of the imagination, and fills the mind with awe.