At every turn he expected to come upon a huge cavern full of little square stone houses, each with a small aperture like a staring dark eye.

The passage lightened and widened, and opened at the foot of a narrow, steep, ascending chute.
Venters had a moment's notice of the rock, which was of the same smoothness and hardness as the slope below, before his gaze went irresistibly upward to the precipitous walls of this wide ladder of granite.

These were ruined walls of yellow sandstone, and so split and splintered, so overhanging with great sections of balancing rim, so impending with tremendous crumbling crags, that Venters caught his breath sharply, and, appalled, he instinctively recoiled as if a step upward might jar the ponderous cliffs from their foundation.

Indeed, it seemed that these ruined cliffs were but awaiting a breath of wind to collapse and come tumbling down.

Venters hesitated.