THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 111 
the rocks overhanging the aperture. There was 
the first wonder, truly! Clusters of grapes, 
gleaming with blue and violet tints through the 
water which trickled over them, hung from the 
cliffs, while a stout vine, springing from the 
base and climbing nearly to the top, seemed to 
support them. Hundreds on hundreds of 
bunches, clustering so thickly as to conceal the 
leaves, hang, forever ripe and forever un- 
plucked, in that marvelous vintage of the sub- 
terranean world. For whose hand shall squeeze 
the black, infernal wine from the grapes that 
grow beyond Lethe ?” 
Dr. Wright tells us, in more sober language, 
that the walls and ceiling of Martha’s Vineyard 
are studded with stalactite nodules of carbonate 
of lime, colored with the black oxide of iron, 
and in size and appearance resembling grapes. 
A stalactite three inches in diameter, and ex- 
tending from the floor to the ceiling, is termed 
the Grape- Vine. 
A large stalagmite projects from the right — 
wall, a few inches from the floor, and is termed 
the Battering-Rain. 
EKlindo Avenue takes its origin directly over 
the Pass of El Ghor. It presents no points of 
special interest, except that the avenue leading: 
