the narrowing road
became completely choked with them, and the only mode of progression was
that of a slow, toilsome, dangerous scramble. Still the pair pushed
resolutely on, every minute hoping that the difficulties of the journey
would come to an end, and every minute less willing to turn back and
again encounter the obstacles already surmounted. At length the path
became so narrow that one enormous boulder sufficed to completely block
the way, whilst the perpendicular rocky walls of the chasm towered so
far aloft that only the merest thread of sky was visible; the air grew
chill and damp, and so deep a twilight gloom pervaded the place that it
was difficult to distinguish any object more than half a dozen yards
distant.

The weary travellers looked at each other in dismay. Was this to be the
ineffectual ending of that long and toilsome scramble through the
ravine? There was just one single narrow crevice between the huge
boulder which blocked their way, and one of the precipitous walls which
pressed so closely in upon them--a crevice left by the irregular shape
of the block, and affording barely space enough for a man of robust
proportions to squeeze himself through--and they determined that, before
retracing their steps, they would at least satisfy their curiosity so
far as to creep through this crevice and see what lay on the farther
side. The baronet with some little difficulty squeezed through first,
and his exclamation of astonishment quickly took the colonel to his
side.

The pair found themselves in a narrow rent between the two vertical
faces of rock--the projections of the one accurately corresponding with
the indentations of the other, and clearly demonstrating that, at some
distant period of the earth's history, that mighty chasm had been
suddenly torn open by a great natural convulsion awful in its intensity
beyond all power of imagination. The rent was roofed in as it were by
boulders which thickly hung suspended and jammed in at varying heights
between the almost touching walls of the rift; and the adventurous
explorers could not repress a shudder as they glanced aloft at these
huge masses and thought of the consequences to themselves which would
ensue should a projecting corner just then yield and suffer its parent
rock to come crashing down to the bottom. Their first impulse was to
beat a precipitate retreat; their second, to go forward; for at only a
few yards' distance before them the rift