The visitor of
this cavern might approach it by a boat from the river, or by a
rugged path along the margin of the brook and across the ledges of
the rock. This rough shelter went by the name of Talbot's Cave down
to a very recent period, and would still go by that name, if it were
yet in existence. But it happened, not many years since, that Port
Deposit was awakened to a sudden notion of the value of the granite
of the cliff, and, as commerce is a most ruthless contemner of all
romance, and never hesitates between a speculation of profit and a
speculation of history, Talbot's Cave soon began to figure
conspicuously in the Price Current, and in a very little while
disappeared, like a witch from the stage, in blasts of sulphur fire
and rumbling thunder, under the management of those effective
scene-shifters, the quarrymen. A government contract, more potent than
the necromancy of the famed wizard Michael Scott, lifted this massive
rock from its base, and, flying with it full two hundred miles,
buried it fathoms below the surface of the Atlantic, at the Rip Raps,
near Hampton Roads; and thus it happens that I cannot vouch the
ocular proof of the Cave to certify the legend I am about to relate.
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