t high, were cracked from turret to base; they bowled out
at such an angle that we were afraid to ride under them. Mountains of
yellow rock hung balanced, ready to tumble down at the first angry
breath of the gods. We rode among carved stones, pillars, obelisks and
sculptured ruined walls of a fallen Babylon. Slides reaching all the
way across and far up the canyon wall obstructed our passage. On every
stone silent green lizards sunned themselves, gliding swiftly as we
came near to their marble homes.

We came into a region of wind-worn caves, of all sizes and shapes, high
and low on the cliffs; but strange to say, only on the north side of
the canyon they appeared with dark mouths open and uninviting. One,
vast and deep, though far off, menaced us as might the cave of a
tawny-maned king of beasts; yet it impelled, fascinated and drew us on.

"It's a long, hard climb," said Wallace to the Colonel, as we
dismounted.

"Boys, I'm with you," came the reply. And he was with us all the way,
as we clambered over the immense blocks and threaded a passage between
them and pulled weary legs up, one after the other. So steep lay the
jumble of cliff fragments that we lost sight of the cave long before we
got near it. Suddenly we rounded a stone, to halt and gasp at the thing
looming before us.

The dark portal of death or hell might have yawned there. A gloomy
hole, large enough to admit a church, had been hollowed in the cliff by
ages of nature's chiseling.

"Vast sepulcher of Time's past, give up thy dead!" cried Wallace,
solemnly.

"Oh! dark Stygian cave forlorn!" quoted I, as feelingly as my friend.

Jones hauled us down from the clouds.

"Now, I wonder what kind of a prehistoric animal holed in here?" said
he.

Forever the one absorbing interest! If he realized the sublimity of
this place, he did not show it.

The floor of the cave ascended from the very threshold. Stony ridges
circled from wall to wall. We climbed till we were two hundred feet
from the opening, yet we were not half-way to the dome.

Our horses, browsing in the sage far below, looked like ants. So steep
did the ascent become that we desisted; for if one of us had slipped on
the smooth incline, the result would have been terrible. Our voices
rang clear and hollow from the walls. We were so high that the sky was
blotted out by the overhanging square, cornice-like top of the door;
and the light was weird, dim, shadowy, opaque. It was a gray tomb.