There was, until not long ago, a notable cavern at the foot of a rocky cliff about a mile below the town of Port Deposit.  It was of small compass, yet sufficiently spacious to furnish some rude shelter against the weather to one who might seek refuge within its solitary chamber.  It opened upon the river just where a small brook comes brattling down the bank, along the base of a hill of some magnitude that yet retains the stately name of Mount Ararat.  The visitor of this cavern might approach it by a boat from the river, or by a rugged path along the margin of the brook and across the ledges of the rock.  This rough shelter went by the name of Talbot’s Cave down to a very recent period, and would still go by that name, if it were yet in existence.  But it happened, not many years since, that Port Deposit was awakened to a sudden notion of the value of the granite of the cliff, and, as commerce is a most ruthless contemner of all romance, and never hesitates between a speculation of profit and a speculation of history, Talbot’s Cave soon began to figure conspicuously in the Price Current, and in a very little while disappeared, like a witch from the stage, in blasts of sulphur fire and rumbling thunder, under the management of those effective scene-shifters, the quarrymen.  A government contract, more potent than the necromancy of the famed wizard Michael Scott, lifted this massive rock from its base, and, flying with it full two hundred miles, buried it fathoms below the surface of the Atlantic, at the Rip Raps, near Hampton Roads; and thus it happens that I cannot vouch the ocular proof of the Cave to certify the legend I am about to relate.

The tradition attached to this spot had nothing but a misty and spectral outline.  It was indefinite in the date, uncertain as to persons, mysterious as to the event,—­just such a tradition as to whet the edge of one’s curiosity and to leave it hopeless of gratification.  I may relate it in a few words.

Once upon a time, somewhere between one and two hundred years ago, there was a man by the name of Talbot, a kinsman of Lord Baltimore, who had committed some crime, for which he fled and became an outlaw and was pursued by the authorities of the Province.  To escape these, he took refuge in the wilderness on the Susquehanna, where he found this cave, and used it for concealment and defence for some time,—­how long, the tradition does not say.  This region was then inhabited by a fierce tribe of Indians, who are described on Captain John Smith’s map as the “Sasquesahannocks,” and who were friendly to the outlaw and supplied him with provisions.  To these details was added another, which threw an additional interest over the story,—­that Talbot had a pair of beautiful English hawks, such as were most prized in the sport of falconry, and that these were the companions of his exile, and were trained by him to pursue and strike the wild duck that abounded, then as now, on this part of the river; and he thus found amusement to beguile his solitude, as well as sustenance in a luxurious article of food, which is yet the pride of gastronomic science, and the envy of bons vivants throughout this continent.