336 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFOKNIA 



dark with incessant activity. The archways and 

 ceilings were everywhere hung with down-growing 

 crystals, like inverted groves of leafless saplings, 

 some of them large, others delicately attenuated, 

 each tipped with a single drop of water, like the 

 terminal bud of a pine-tree. The only appreciable 

 sounds were the dripping and tinkling of water 

 falling into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal 

 floors. 



In some places the crystal decorations are ar 

 ranged in graceful flowing folds deeply plicated 

 like stiff silken drapery. In others straight lines 

 of the ordinary stalactite forms are combined with 

 reference to size and tone in a regularly graduated 

 system like the strings of a harp with musical tones 

 corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps 

 we played by striking the crystal strings with a 

 stick. The delicious liquid tones they gave forth 

 seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly whispered 

 and wavered through the majestic halls and died 

 away in faintest cadence, the music of fairy-land. 

 Here we lingered and reveled, rejoicing to find so 

 much music in stony silence, so much splendor in 

 darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the 

 mountains, buildings ever in process of construc 

 tion, yet ever finished, developing from perfection 

 to perfection, profusion without overabundance; 

 every particle visible or invisible in glorious mo 

 tion, marching to the music of the spheres in a 

 region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness 

 and death. 



The outer chambers of mountain caves are fre 

 quently selected as homes by wild beasts. In the 



