Just as she came to this very disagreeable conclusion she spied an
opening on her left, from which a bridle-path struck out. With an
exclamation of joy she immediately turned her horse's head and
struck into it. This path was very rocky, but in some degree clearer
than the other, and she went on quickly, singing to herself, until
gradually her voice began to be lost in the sound of many rushing
waters.
"It must be the Devil's Punch Bowl! I am approaching!" she said to
herself, as she went on.
She was right. The roaring of the waters grew deafening and the path
became so rugged with jagged and irregularly piled rocks, that Cap
could scarcely keep her horse upon his feet in climbing over them.
And suddenly, when she least looked for it, the great natural
curiosity--the Devil's Punch Bowl--burst upon her view!
It was an awful abyss, scooped out as it were from the very bowels
of the earth, with its steep sides rent open in dreadful chasms, and
far down in its fearful depths a boiling whirlpool of black waters.
Urging her reluctant steed through a thicket of stunted thorns and
over a chaos of shattered rocks, Capitola approached as near as she
safely could to the brink of this awful pit. So absorbed was she in
gazing upon this terrible phenomenon of natural scenery that she had
not noticed, in the thicket on her right, a low hut that, with its
brown-green moldering colors, fell so naturally in with the hue of
the surrounding scenery as easily to escape observation.
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