THE JENOLAN CAVES. 



Looking upward from the bed of the Creek through the roughly-piled rocks and the 

 bright and varied foliage, a half of "The Carlotta Arch" is seen, and beyond, a flight 

 of concrete steps on the high ground almost beneath the arch. This is the entrance to 

 " The Nettle Cave," so called because of the abundance of nettles which in the old days 

 grew about its entrance. It is a sad misnomer. "New Luxor," " Karnac," "The Basilica," 

 "The Hall of the Kings," " Asgard," or "The Tombs of the Giants" would be more 

 fitting, for all within 

 is vast and grand, and 

 it is as magnificent a 

 contrast to the spark- 

 ling beauties of " The 

 Imperial" as a forest's 

 mighty oak to a gar- 

 den hyacinth. 



The "Nettle Caves" 

 connect with "The 

 Arch " ; they may be 

 viewed and described 

 as one. All their char- 

 acteristics are the same; 

 vastness, grandeur, 

 colossal proportions 

 everywhere huge 

 caverns upheld by 

 gigantic columns, great 

 shapes recumbent as of 

 dead giants at rest, 

 vaulted roofs a hun- 

 dred feet aloft, and 



walls crowded with figures in which may be seen countless statuesque shapes of a soft, pure 

 gray, like the interior of a mediaeval cathedral, or else green-stained through saturation with 

 coppery solutions. On entering "The Nettle Cave" the first group met with is "The Com- 

 pany of the Ancients "-five huge stalagmites worn and fretted away to poor stumps of 

 their former magnificence, but still massive and picturesque. Only one, a little apart, stands 

 erect and complete, fourteen feet in height and of proportionate bulk, somewhat kingly in 

 attitude. A long hall is seen beyond " The Ancient," with one perfect column, where 

 stalactite and stalagmite have met, reaching from roof to floor. Once there were five, but 

 an abominable vandalism, in the days when the Caves had no secure guard, broke down 

 and destroyed four. One remains central in this long hall or corridor, whose smooth 

 floor, thirty yards in length and ten in width, leads to a grotto named "The Sculptor's 

 Studio," where, it might well be imagined, spirits who had wrought in building or 

 decorating the dead cities of the Old World had suddenly ceased from their earlier toil, 

 for these caverns and columns are older by untold ages than any cities the Old World 

 knew. There are stalactites, marked by the keeper of the Caves, which have grown but 



THE BROKEN COLUMN, CATHEDRAL CAVE. 



