Returning to the head of Pensico Avenue, we turned to our right, and
entered the narrow pass which leads to the river, pursuing which, for
a few hundred yards, descending all the while, at one or two places
down a ladder or stone steps, we came to a path cut through a high and
broad embankment of sand, which very soon conducted us to the much
talked of and anxiously looked for Winding Way. The Winding Way, has,
in the opinion of many, been channeled in the rock by the gradual
attrition of water. If this be so, and appearances seem to support
such belief, at what early age of the world did the work commence? Was
it not when "the earth was without form and void," thousands of years
perhaps, before the date of the Mosaic account of the Creation? The
Winding Way is one hundred and five feet long, eighteen inches wide,
and from three to seven feet deep, widening out above, sufficiently to
admit the free use of one's arms. It is throughout tortuous, a perfect
_zig-zag_, the terror of the Falstaffs and the ladies of "fat, fair
and forty," who have an instinctive dread of the trials to come, and
are well aware of the merriment that their efforts to _force a
passage_ will excite among their companions of less length of girdle.
Into this winding way, we entered in Indian file, and turning our
right side, then our left, twisting this way, then that, had nearly
made good the passage, when our _fat friend_, who was puffing and
blowing behind us like a high pressure engine, cried out, "Halt, ahead
there! I am stuck as tight as a wedge in a log!" Halt we did, when the
guide, looking at our friend, who was in truth "wedg'd in the rocky
way and sticking fast," cried out, "I told you, when you said at the
Pine Apple Bush, that you felt _especially happy_, to wait till you
got to the Winding Way, to see how you would feel then!" The
imprisoned gentleman soon burst his bonds, not, however, without
damage to his indispensables; and at length forcing his way into
Relief Hall, he cried out, in the joy of his heart, while stretching
himself and wiping the perspiration from his jolly, rubicund face,
"never was a name more appropriate given to any place--Relief.
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