[402] {626}[Compare The Siege of Corinth, lines 438, 439, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 467.]
[403] {629} Of this cave (which is no fiction) the original will be found in the ninth chapter of "Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands" [1817, i. 267-279]. I have taken the poetical liberty to transplant it to Toobonai, the last island where any distinct account is left of Christian and his comrades.
[The following is the account given by Mariner: "On this island [Hoonga] there is a peculiar cavern, which was first discovered by a young chief, whilst diving after a turtle. The nature of this cavern will be better understood if we imagine a hollow rock rising sixty feet or more above the surface of the water, into the cavity of which there is no known entrance but one, and that is on the side of the rock, as low down as six feet under the water, into which it flows; and, consequently, the base of the cavern may be said to be the sea itself." Mariner seeing some young chiefs diving into the water one after another, and not rise again, he inquired of the last, ... what they were about? "'Follow me,'" said he, "'and I will take you where you have never been before....'" Mariner prepared to follow his companion, and, guided by the light reflected from his heels, entered the opening in the rock, and rose into the cavern. The light was sufficient, after remaining about five minutes, to show objects with some little distinctness; ... Nevertheless, as it was desirable to have a stronger light, Mariner dived out again, and, priming his pistol, tied plenty of gnatoo tight round it, and wrapped the whole up in a plantain-leaf: he directed an attendant to bring a torch in the same way. Thus prepared, he re-entered the cavern, unwrapped the gnatoo, fired it by the flash of the powder, and lighted the torch. "The place was now illuminated tolerably well.... It appeared (by guess) to be about forty feet wide in the main part, but it branched off, on one side, in two narrower portions. The medium height seemed also about forty feet. The roof was hung with stalactites in a very curious way, resembling, upon a cursory view, the Gothic arches and ornaments of an old church." According to one of the matabooles present, the entire family of a certain chief had, in former times, been condemned to death for conspiring against a rival tyrant—the chief to be taken out to sea and drowned, the rest of the family to be massacred. One of the chiefs daughters was a beautiful girl, to whom the youth who discovered the cave was attached. "He had long been enamoured of this young maiden, but had never dared to make her acquainted with the soft emotions of his heart, knowing that she was betrothed to a chief of higher rank and greater power, but now, ... no time was to be lost; he flew to her abode ... declared himself her deliverer if she would trust to his honour.... Soon her consenting hand was clasped in his: the shades of evening favoured their escape ... till her lover had brought a small canoe to a lonely part of the beach. In this they speedily embarked.... They soon arrived at the rock, he leaped into the water, and she, instructed by him, followed close after; they rose into the cavern, and rested from their fatigue, partaking of some refreshments which he had brought there for himself...." Here she remained, visited from time to time by her more fortunate Leander, until he was enabled to carry her off to the Fiji islands, where they dwelt till the death of the tyrant, when they returned to Vavaoo, "and lived long in peace and happiness.">[
[404] {631} This may seem too minute for the general outline (in Mariner's Account) from which it is taken. But few men have travelled without seeing something of the kind—on land, that is. Without adverting to Ellora, in Mungo Park's last journal, he mentions having met with a rock or mountain so exactly resembling a Gothic cathedral, that only minute inspection could convince him that it was a work of nature.
[Ellora, a village in the Nizám's dominions, is thirteen miles north-west of Aurangábád. "It is famous for its rock-caves and temples. The chief building, called the kailás, ... is a great monolithic temple, isolated from surrounding rock, and carved outside as well as in.... It is said to have been built about the eighth century by Rájá Edu of Ellichpur."—Hunter's Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1885, iv. 348-351. The passage in Mungo Park's Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa, 1815, p. 75, runs thus: "June 24th [1805],—Left Sullo, and travelled through a country beautiful beyond imagination, with all the possible diversities of rock, sometimes towering up like ruined castles, spires, pyramids, etc. We passed one place so like a ruined Gothic abbey, that we halted a little, before we could satisfy ourselves that the niches, windows, etc., were all natural rock.">[
[405] [Byron's quadrisyllable was, probably, a poetic licence. There is, however, an obsolete plural, stalactitæ, to be found in the works of John Woodward, M.D., Fossils of England, 1729, i. 155.]
[fs] {632} Where Love and Torquil might lie safe from men.—[MS. D. erased.]
[406] {633} The reader will recollect the epigram of the Greek anthology, or its translation into most of the modern languages—
"Whoe'er thou art, thy master see—
He was, or is, or is to be."