I never saw a more pleasing or perfect illusion.  It would be difficult to estimate correctly the size of the Mammoth Cave.  The American gazetteers say it extends ten or twelve miles, and has lateral branches, which, altogether, amount to forty miles.  It is, I imagine, second in size only to the Cacuhuainilpa, in Mexico, which, if the accounts given are accurate, would take half a dozen such as the Mammoth inside.  I fear it is almost superfluous to inform the reader, that the Anglo-Saxon keeps up his unenviable character for disfiguring every place he visits; and you consequently see the names of Smith, Brown, Snooks, &c., smoked on the rocks in all directions—­an appropriate sooty record of a barbarous practice.[N]

Having enjoyed two days in exploring this “gigantic freak of Nature,” we commenced our return about half-past four in the afternoon, so as to get over the break-neck track before dark.  Old Bell[O] welcomed us as usual with his honey, brandy, and water.  He then prepared us some dinner, as we wished to snatch a few hours’ sleep before commencing our return to Louisville, with its twenty-one hours of pleasure.  About half-past ten at night, a blast in the breeze, mixed with a confused slushy sound, as sixteen hoofs plashed in the mud, rang the knell in our ears, “Your time has come!” I anxiously looked as the mail pulled up in the middle of the road opposite to the door—­they always allow the passengers the privilege of wading through the mud to the door of the inn—­to see if by any chance it was empty, having been told that but few people comparatively travelled the back route—­no wonder, if they could help it.  Alas! the steam on the window announced, with fatal certainty, some humanities inside.  The door opened; out they came, one, two, three, four.  It was a small coach, with three seats, having only space for two persons on each, thus leaving places inside for my friend and myself.  “Any room outside, there?”

“Room for one, sir!”

There was no help for it, and we were therefore obliged to leave one servant behind, to follow next night.

Horses changed, honey-toddy all drank, in we got into the centre seat.  “What is this all round?” “Thick drugget, sir; they nail it round in winter to keep the cold out.”—­Thank Heaven, it is only nailed at the bottom.  Suffocation began; down goes my window.  Presently a sixteen-stone kind of overgrown Pickwickian “Fat Boy,” sitting opposite me, exclaims aloud, with a polar shudder, “Ugh! it’s very cold!” and finding I was inattentive, he added, “Don’t you find it very cold?” “Me, sir?  I’m nearly fainting from heat,” I replied; and then, in charity, I lent him a heavy full-sized Inverness plaid, in which he speedily enveloped his fat carcass.  What with the plaids, and his five inches deep of fat, his bones must have been in a vapour bath.  The other vis-a-vis was a source of uneasiness to me on a different score.  He kept up a perpetual expectorating discharge; and,