After this we come to the “Gothic Avenue,” which would be a very interesting place to us if we but had a little more time; but we hurry through it, for the next room we are to visit is called the “Haunted Chamber!” Every one of us must be very anxious to see anything of that kind.  When we get into it, however, we are very much disappointed.  It is not half so gloomy and dark as the rest of the cave, for here we are pretty sure to find people, and lights, and signs of life.

Here you may sometimes buy gingerbread and bottled beer, from women who have stands here for that purpose.  It is expected that when visitors get this far they will be hungry.  Sometimes, too, there are persons who live down here, and spend most of their time in this chamber.  These are invalid people with weak lungs, who think that the air of the cave is good for them.  I do not know whether they are right or not, but I am sure that they take very gloomy medicine.  The only reason for calling this room the Haunted Chamber is, that the first explorers of the cave found mummies here.

Who these were when they were alive, no man can say.  If they were Indians, they were very different Indians from those who have lived in this country since its discovery.  They do not make mummies.  But all over our land we find evidences that some race—­now extinct—­lived here before the present North American Indian.

Whether the ghosts of any of these mummies walk about in this room.  I cannot say; but as no one ever saw any, or heard any, or knew anybody who had seen or heard any, I think it is doubtful.

When we leave this room we go down some ladders and over a bridge, and then we enter what is called the “Labyrinth,” where the passage turns and twists on itself in a very abrupt manner, and where the roof is so low that all of us, except those who are very short indeed, must stoop very low.  When we get through this passage, which some folks call the “Path of Humiliation”—­for everybody has to bow down, you know—­we come to a spot where the guide says he is going to show us something through a window.

The window is nothing but a hole broken in a rocky wall; but as we look through it, and hold the lanterns so that we can see as much as possible, we perceive that we are gazing down into a deep and enormous well.  They call it the “Bottomless Pit.”  If we drop bits of burning paper into this well we can see them fall down, down, and down, until they go out, but can never see them stop, as if they had reached the bottom.

The hole through which we are looking is cut through one side of this well, so that there is a great deal of it above us as well as below; but although we hold our lanterns up, hoping to see the top, we can see nothing but pitchy darkness up there.  The roof of this pit is too high for the light to strike upon it.  Here is a picture of some persons dropping lights down into this pit, hoping to be able to see the bottom.