Fingal's Cave a walkway just above high-water level permitting exploration on foot. From the inside, the entrance seems to frame the island of Iona across the water. Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn visited in 1829 and wrote an overture, "The Hebrides", Op. 26, (also known as "Fingal's Cave overture"), inspired by the weird echoes in the cave. Mendelssohn's overture popularized the cave as a tourist destination. Other famous 19th-century visitors included author Jules Verne, who used it in his book "Le Rayon Vert" ("The Green Ray"), and mentions it in the novels "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "The Mysterious Island";
Overture fanfare for muted trumpets. More important, however, was the prologue, which comprised sung dialogue between allegorical characters which introduced the overarching themes of the stories depicted. As a musical form, however, the French overture first appears in the court ballet and operatic overtures of Jean-Baptiste Lully, which he elaborated from a similar, two-section form called "Ouverture", found in the French ballets de cour as early as 1640. This French overture consists of a slow introduction in a marked "dotted rhythm" (i.e., exaggerated iambic, if the first chord is disregarded), followed by a lively movement in fugato style. The overture was