3 ,g AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



completed work wrecked all their plans confounded. For it is but the beauty of magni- 

 ficent incompleteness which is seen in the marvellous formation right opposite to "The 

 Broken Column." Marble columns and walls seem to have been begun with intent to 

 support a canopy, the first lines of whose decoration had been carefully inwrought ; a 

 iVw stalactites had been drooped as mortals hang tapestry, and for a hundred feet in 

 length the square front of the canopy of a great throne had been planned and left. 

 The wreck, the chaos, the fragments of the mighty building are marvellously beautiful, 

 but there is a sentiment of death, of stoppage; of obstruction in them all a false senti- 

 ment, for still the work proceeds, still stalactite and stalagmite descend and arise, still 

 the marvellous textures of the " shawls " extend, the screens are perfected, and walls and 

 domes and inner recesses clothed with an ever-increasing beauty. Downward from " The 

 Exhibition," past tinted rocks reaching from ceiling to floor like cataracts, that tumbling- 

 down, in colour as the mane of a chestnut steed, had been turned to stone and 

 crystallized and sprinkled with powdered diamonds ; by monstrous columns, grotesque and 

 grand and beautiful ; past little grottoes, each one a treasure-house, the path still leads ; 

 and before making the ascent which leads to "The Music Hall" and " Lurline's Grotto," 

 it is well to pause and look aloft and realize the magnitude of the tremendous dip of 

 roof, which smooth and solid stretches as the segment of a little world high overhead. 

 The portion seen by the rays of the lamp cannot be less than eight hundred feet in 

 measurement, and so slight is the curve that it does not appear to contain more than 

 three or four degrees of circumference. It slants downward as the smooth face of a 

 tremendous cloud-bank, flattened, yet driven, by a growing wind. It is such a vault as 

 might well be imagined beneath the greatest pyramid. But few visitors regard the roof 

 or walls when the light begins to play about the glories of " Lurline's Grotto," the 

 completed shrine where every pillar and column and frieze and cornice seem complete, 

 where such work has been accomplished as was never seen about the kingliest tomb or 

 the lordliest shrine of the world. It is as though alabaster and marble, and jacinth and 

 chrysolite had been freely used. Everything is suffused with lovely semi-transparent 

 colour. The iron and the copper are so intermixed with the crystal that the faintest 

 and yet most perfect tints are produced ; no vein, or stain, or blot on them all. " The 

 Music Gallery" is near to "Lurline's Grotto," another group of resonant stalactites, 

 smaller than those of " The Belfry," and rather shrill than sweet or deep in tone. When 

 these are passed a cavern yawns, across which an iron bridge has been swung near to 

 the inner wall. Down the depths "The Hidden River" flows; a stone flung over 

 the rail rebounds from rock to rock, and finally splashes in the still, clear waters. 

 Beyond the bridge, in still deeper recesses of the cave, Nature has wrought fantastically ; 

 there is a heap of " potatoes " marble fragments rounded and encrusted with some brown 

 substance like the outer skin of potatoes newly dug from the soil. Near by are " snow- 

 balls" and "cauliflowers" almost perfect images of these familiar shapes hanging to walls 

 and ceilings, shown upon the floor and last (so far as at present explored) in a little 

 grotto beyond a narrow passage, a single massive stalagmite rises before a cranny in the 

 rock-face through which is no possibility of entry, sparkling with an opal-like fire wher- 

 ever touched by a moving light. This is called the end of the cave. Having seen it 

 steps are retraced until an iron ladder is reached, which gives access by a short cut to 



