CHAP. viir. THE CANGO CAVEUNS. 199 



geraniums growing in their native state. The horse-shoe 

 and plain-leaved scarlet were quite large shrubs, sometimes 

 six or seven feet high. The dark oak-leaved kind grew 

 vigorously. The ivy-leaved variety spread its creeping 

 branches over the adjacent trees and opened its pink blossoms 

 in great abundance. In other places I noticed several of 

 the finer leaved Pelargonhtms, with small and delicately 

 pencilled flowers. 



About noon we l^ft the stream, and, leading our horses 

 some distance up the mountain's side, reached the entrance to 

 the Cango Caverns. Having provided ourselves with guides 

 and large candles, inserted in the end of bamboo canes, we 

 proceeded along a passage about six feet wide, on an uneven 

 and slippery path, for about thirty or forty yards. We then 

 came to a precipice, which we descended by means of a rude 

 sort of ladder, for about thirty feet, and then found ourselves 

 in a spacious subterranean hall or chamber, from sixty to a 

 hundred feet wide, and fifty feet high ; but, though our party 

 was large and our lights numerous, it was not easy to judge 

 of dimensions under such circumstances. This chamber is 

 called after the discoverer of the cavern. Van Zil's Hall. In 

 different places parts of the dark bluish-coloured original lime- 

 stone, or schistous rock, appeared, but the sides were nearly 

 covered with calcareous incrustations, and the roof Avas 

 hung with stalactites of varied form, but chiefly small and 

 short. A number of apertures or chasms, some of them three 

 or four feet wide, opened into passages leading to other smaller 

 chambers or grottoes, some covered with recently crystallised 

 stalactites, which reflected and multiplied our lights like the 

 cut glass of a chandelier. In others the crystallisations were 

 in a state of decomposition. We visited some exceedingly 

 beautiful grottoes on the left-hand side of the large entrance 

 hall, and then proceeded further towards the interior of the 

 mountain, passing sometimes through a series of chambers 



o 4 



