But I am sorry to tell you I have brought a cough from the cavern
that does not at all please me; indeed, it occasions me no little
pain, which makes me suppose that one must needs breathe a very
unwholesome damp air in this cavern. But then, were that the case,
I do not comprehend how my friend Charon should have held it out so
long and so well as he has.
This morning I was up very early in order to view the ruins, and to
climb a high hill alongside of them. The ruins are directly over
the mouth of the hole on the hill, which extends itself some
distance over the cavern beyond the ruins, and always widens, though
here in front it is so narrow that the building takes up the whole.
From the ruins all around there is nothing but steep rock, so that
there is no access to it but from the town, where a crooked path
from the foot of the hill is hewn in the rock, but is also
prodigiously steep.
The spot on which the ruins stand is now all overgrown with nettles
and thistles. Formerly, it is said, there was a bridge from this
mountain to the opposite one, of which one may yet discover some
traces, as in the vale which divides the two rocks we still find the
remains of some of the arches on which the bridge rested.
