Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/172

Rh, or, as it is pronouucedpronounced [sic], "Suthill," and coming into sight of the two white light houses that are erected above the Bill. It is remarkable how generally the names of the hamlets contain the word "well," showing doubtless that the existence of a spring of water was the determining cause of the position of a village. Here I turned off to the left, deferring to another occasion a sight of the extreme point or Bill, for lack of time, as I was desirous of exploring another singular natural curiosity, Keeve's Hole. Over a breadth of ploughed land, sown with clover in strips, I made my way towards the edge of the cliff, but before reaching it came suddenly on an oval pit about eighteen yards long by eleven wide, and ten feet deep in the middle where the flat bed of stone is uncovered. The central part of this bed has dropped away, and though the aperture, the thickness of the stratum being about three feet, I looked down into an ample cavern. The interior was somewhat dark, but sufficient light was admitted to allow of the sides and bottom being obscurely discerned; a light which came not from the orifice in the roof through which I was peering, but from a gallery which, with some windings, opened on the face of the cliff, and through which the waves of the sea were dashing with a reverberating roar. I could scarcely look down into the abyss without a shuddering dread, which was not diminished by the story told me by a lad near, of a fool-hardy fellow who, to elicit the admiration of his comrades, must needs jump across the chasm. He failed to make good his footing, and fell through into the cavern, which, as well as I could judge, is about fifty feet deep.