merry tumbling stream from twenty to thirty feet in
in width, formerly almost alive with trout, and shaded
by the foliage of overhanging vines and branches. At
rio'ht anoles to the Pluton canon, from its northern side,
is a gorore about half a mile in leno^th, and but a few rods
in unequal width, with steep walls rising from 50 to 150
feet. This little off-shoot is called the Devil's canon.
From its entrance at the Pluton canon its uneven
surface rises, and at the upper end it divides in two,
and mingles with the hills. A little creek with minia-
ture falls and cascades runs through it, whose waters
at their source are pure and cold, but which as they
descend soon become contaminated by their surround-
ings. Sometimes a partial footpath winds by the
stream, between the rocks and mobile earth, but often
it is undermined or sw^ept away. The entrance is but
a narrow rocky pass, roofed by fallen, but yet grow-
ing trees, adorned with fantastic roots, and partially
covered with debris and creeping plants. This en-
trance is called Proserpine's Grotto, and be^^ond it
the canon widens a little.
The scene within is barren and ghastly. Bottom and sides are skinned of every sign of vegetation, and scoriated with sulphur, salts, and slimy deposits. Around the upper portion of the sides, the earth assumes a reddish hue, below which it is marbled with the ghastly colors of festering flesh, patches of pale ashen and white, patches of green and slaty stain, yellow sulphur snow and black sulphur root, with all the intermediate shades of death and dissolution. Hot springs burst forth from hot ground, spitting, sputtering, hissing, and panting in unmanageable wrath. Through whistling steam and sickening sul- phur, yawn horrible mouths like the gates of Aver- nus. It is as utterly infernal a place as can well be imagined, lurid and murky, and sickening with heavy vapor. In every hole and corner this model Pande- monium seems inhabited by shadowy fiends, and every fiend to be doing his best to render his little
