Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 2).djvu/6

 them rose a wood of solemn verdure, which reached half way up the ascent; the rest of the mountain was rocky and bare of vegetation. The beauty and sweetness of the shrubs; the lovely prospect it commanded of the lake and skirting woods, and the solemn shadows cast upon it by the trees above, rendered the grotto a delightful place for retirement.

From this cavity, through an irregular but not inelegant arch, formed by a chasm in the rock, was an entrance into another, in the centre of which a deep and spacious bath had been contrived many years back, which was constantly supplied by the cold limpid streams of the mountain; this bath, like the grotto, received its only light from apertures in the roof, from whence wild shrubs hung in fantastic wreaths; and about it were smaller caves that answered the pur-