162 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



visitors are not often taken, there being therein but 

 one scene of more than passing interest. This is 

 "Helen's Dome/ 7 so named by that Nestor of cave 

 explorers, the Rev. II. C. Hovey, in honor of his wife. 

 To reach it one must pass through " General Scott's 

 Reception Room," 75 by 100 feet in dimensions, and 

 then by stooping and crawling through a narrow 

 passage into " Diamond Avenue," where nature 

 asserts her power to work miracles of beauty from 

 cheap materials, transforming gypsum and epsom 

 salts into lustrous crystals which sparkle 'on the walls 

 and glisten from the floor. Leaving a branch to the 

 right, we turned to the left, and passing cautiously 

 beneath a poised mass of fallen rock, which seemed 

 ready to fall at the slightest touch, we entered a large 

 opening midway between roof and floor, and a few feet 

 farther on found ourselves at the foot of a great circu- 

 lar pit some twenty feet in diameter and extending up- 

 ward through the solid limestone for eighty feet or more. 



This was Helen's Dome, and when the guide kindled 

 his "red fire," and the light therefrom revealed the 

 rugged, water-worn carvings of the sides, and the 

 pendent stalactites, which far above gleamed and 

 glistened from their inaccessible heights, we with one 

 accord voted it the wildest and most romantic bit of 

 scenery which the cave possessed. 



Retracing our steps to Jordan's Wait, we took the 

 right branch around the Continent. This led us on 

 through a low passage known as "Purgatory," 140 

 feet in length, its floor of yellow ochre, with here and 

 there a handsome crystal of selenite ; its roof of white 

 limestone, with many fantastic grooves and carvings 



