The cavern is about one hundred and
twenty feet in height, fifty in breadth, and three hundred in length.
The entrance was completely invisible. By screaming in our ears, the
guide contrived to explain to us that there was one more point which we
might have reached had the wind been in any other direction. Unluckily
it blew full upon the sheet of the cataract, and drove it in so as to
dash upon the rock over which we must have passed. A few yards beyond
this, the precipice becomes perpendicular, and, blending with the water,
forms the extremity of the cave. After a stay of nearly ten minutes in
this most horrible purgatory, we gladly left it to its loathsome
inhabitants the eel and the water-snake, who crawl about its recesses in
considerable numbers,--and returned to the inn--_De Roos's Travels in
the United States, &c._
* * * * *
THE GUILLOTINE.
The first sight, however, which it fell to my lot to witness at Brussels
in this second and short visit, was neither gay nor handsome, nor dear
in any sense, but the very reverse; it being that of the punishment of
the guillotine inflicted on a wretched murderer, named John Baptist
Michel.[2] Hearing, at the moment of my arrival, that this tragical
scene was on the point of being acted in the great square of the
market-place, I determined for once to make a sacrifice of my feelings
to the desire of being present at a spectacle, with the nature of which
the recollections of revolutionary horrors are so intimately associated.
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