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prince Charles’ cave.
covered rock, and interwreathed with long festoons of ivy
leaves of the freshest green. Then there are slender columnar
flutings, and elegant depending points, forming Gothic arches
by their upward union, and seeming as pure as alabaster when
seen in relief, and contrasted with the dark recess within.
Elegantly waving ferns, and the broader coltsfoot, the rich
though lowly mosses, the adhesive silvery lichens, and various
wild-flowers, fill up the many chambered crevices both of the
natural rock and the more fanciful incrustations which stream
downwards from the loftier arches, and many of the roots and
leaves and ivy stems are themselves incrusted over, and give
an elegant floral form to what is otherwise now an indurated
stony mass.
This cavern, in which Prince Charles lay for a time con¬
cealed, is entered almost from the water by a few steep and
rather difficult steps immediately beneath the drooping fret¬
work, so that the view outwards to those within is chiefly
through the little natural arches.