None had ever ventured
near it and they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. How a
long, long time ago, a big man, "all a same debil-debil," took out with
his mighty fingers a plug of rock and put it "on top alonga
Hinchinbrook." Now the particular decapitated pinnacle of Hinchinbrook
is 20 miles away, and out of all proportion. But these facts do not
affect the legitimacy of the legend. There is the hole, and there on the
top of the far-away mountain the prodigious plug demonstrative evidence
too obvious to be set aside on any such plea as the eternal fitness of
things. Is not the blue point of the mountain a defiantly triumphant
fact? Is not the legend authenticated by tradition and confirmed by
topography?
Why, therefore, doubt it for a moment?
And the hole--it goes a long, long way under the mountain. It is a bad
place, a very bad place. No one has ever been there. Suppose any fella
go inside, bi'mby that fella sick, bi'mby that fella die.
Braving all the honest traditions, one fine day I took a lantern in the
boat and induced the boys to row to the entrance of the cave. Neither
would venture in; indeed, they did all they could to dissuade me,
protesting that evil was sure to befall.
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