us traveller, naturally growing
more curious than common in the presence of these phenomena, will,
at some risk to his neck, descend the bank, and make inquiry into the
reason for the disappearance of the stream. He will see nothing to
account for it, but he will probably arrive at the conclusion that there
are fissures in the river's bed, through which the water falls to feed
the subterranean stream, of which he is pretty certain to have heard
or read. If he will walk back a mile, against the course of the stream,
will cross the main street of Janenne, strike the Montcourtois Road
there, and cross the river bridge, he will see a cavern lipped by the
flowing water, and in that cavern, only a foot or so below the level of
the open-air stream, he will find its subterranean continuation. It has
worked back upon itself in this secret way, by what strange courses no
man knows or can guess. But that the stream is the same has been proved
by a device at once ingenious and simple. Colouring matter of various
sorts has from time to time been thrown into the water at its place
of disappearance, and the tinted stream has poured, hours and hours
afterwards, through the cavern, which is only a mile away, and stands so
near the earlier stream that in times of rain the waters mingle there.

On the sides of the hills, and in the brushwood which clothes their
feet, one finds all manner of holes and caves and crevices, some of them
very shallow, and some of them of unknown depth. In the Bois de Janenne
alone there are four or five of them.

All this has strictly to do with the history of Schwartz, as will by and
by be seen.

When heavy rains fall the river is so swollen that the underground call
upon its resources fails to drain it, and it foams above the fissures in
full volume, so wild and deep that a passer-by would never guess of the
curious trick of nature which is here being played. But the season being
exceptionally dry, I was able to show my find, and from the spot of
the stream's disappearance I led my acquaintance to the cavern. Here
prowling about in a light-footed and adventurous fashion the young
Englishman found a hole in the wall of stone, and, venturing into it,
discovered to his great delight a passage which seemed to lead into the
very entrails of the hill. He proposed instantly to explore this, and I
having that morning purchased of the local tobacconist a box of Italian
vestas, each three or four inches long, and ca