546 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inconspicuous that I did not specially notice it when passing the place 

 on former occasions. Though not originally large, the entrance has 

 been narrowed by rude masonry and a wooden door placed therein. 

 Our officer-guide opened the door by means of an ordinary key which he 

 brought with him, an attendant furnished each of us with a lighted 

 taper, and we began our march into the darkness. 



The artificial character of the cave was at once apparent from the 

 presence of numerous rude piers of the original stone which were left 

 by the quarrymen to support the roof and that part of the city which 

 rests upon it. The floor has the general eastward dip of the strata 

 and, although not very even, it was nowhere difficult to traverse. The 

 height of the roof above the floor differs considerably at different 

 places, probably because of the varying thickness of the fine part of the 

 Eoyal stratum. In some places it is hardly more than ten feet, but 

 in others I estimated the height at twenty feet or more. We walked 

 through the long rude corridors, mostly in a southerly and south- 

 easterly direction, reaching a distance from the entrance that I esti- 

 mated to be not less than a quarter of a mile. I made no estimate of 

 the cubic contents of the cave, but its great size gave me a distinct 

 impression that it is large enough to have furnished all the fine stone 

 that was required for the grand buildings of the ancient city and of 

 its successive rehabilitations. 



As we progressed southward from the entrance the west limiting 

 wall came occasionally into view. It appeared to be quite uneven and 

 I detected there no conditions of the rock which I thought attributable 

 to systematic quarrying such as those which I soon afterward observed 

 in other parts of the cave. For that, and the other reasons already 

 mentioned, I think all the Malake stone which originally existed on 

 the west side and extended to the surface in reverse direction of the dip, 

 was long ago removed and its place supplied with rejected and inferior 

 stone. When we reached the south and east limiting walls of the cave, 

 we found them perpendicular and bearing abundant marks made by the 

 quarrymen. The character of the great excavation and the peculiar 

 quarry-marks which we found upon its walls left no room for doubt 

 as to its great antiquity nor of the fact that it was wholly the work of 

 human hands. What we saw also agreed with numerous well-known 

 legends and with trustworthy historical references to quarry caves of 

 this kind. The surfaces, which bear the marks referred to having 

 never been exposed to the weather nor to extremes of heat and cold, 

 have remained unchanged, and even those marks which were made 

 by the cutting tools of the workmen are still plainly visible. Frag- 

 ments of their burnt-clay lamps and water bottles are also occasionally 

 found in the scanty debris, which was produced by their peculiar 



