Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/351

Rh a tiny lateral combe, the steep sides covered with heather and dense clumps and patches of furze.

Rather more than half-way down the steep slope of the hill is a hole just large enough to admit of a man entering in a stooping posture. To be strictly accurate, the height is 3 ft. 6 in. and the width 3 ft. But once within, the cave is found to be loftier, and runs for 50 feet due west, the height varying from 7 ft. 6 in. to 8 ft. 6 in., and the width expanding to 8 ft. 3 in. Immediately within the entrance may be observed notches cut in the rock, into which a beam might be thrust to close the mouth of the cave, which was then filled in with earth and bramble bushes drawn over it, when it would require a very experienced eye to discover it. As it was, though the mouth was open, my guide was in fault and unable to find it, and it was by accident only that I lit upon it.

At 7 feet from the entrance a lateral gallery branches off to the right, extending at present but 17 feet, and of that a portion of the roof has fallen in. This gallery was much lower than the main one, not being higher than 3 feet, but probably in a portion now choked it rose, at all events in places, to a greater height. This side gallery never served for the storage of smuggled goods. It was a passage that originally was carried as far as the little cluster of cottages at Trevethan, whence, so it is said, another passage communicated with the sands of Forth Mean The opening of the underground way is said to have been in a well at Trevethan. But the whole is now choked up. The tunnel was not carried