208 A COMPARISON OF AMERICAN CAVERNS. 



comprehending its antiquity, measured in years or even by centuries, 

 and serve chiefly to make our vaporing on the subject seem of extremely 

 small account. Nor can we get at a much better estimate by studying 

 the present processes of change, for evidently these have not gone on 

 uniformly since the beginning — both erosion and new growth varying 

 from year to year at every point, and proceeding in no two parts of the 

 cave at exactly the same rate. The indications are, that in past ages 

 the work went on with great rapidity, but that latterly change has been 

 very slow, and at present has almost ceased. 



Leaving the Cathedral, a narrow, jagged passage, where one must 

 continually guard both his shins and his crown from painful bumps, we 

 get an outlook down into a sort of devil's pantheon, full of grotesque 

 shapes and colossal caricatures of things animate and inanimate, casting 

 odd and suggestive shadows in whose gloom fancy may work marvels 

 of unworldly effect, and leads you by a stairway to a well-curtained room 

 called the Bridal Chamber. With an access of that idiocy with which 

 the strongest people, perhaps, are tinctured when about to enter matri- 

 mony, one or two couples have come to this damp hole to be married ; 

 so the place is put down in descriptions as " consecrated !" The back 

 door of the Bridal Chamber admits to Giant's Hall, just beyond which 

 is the Ballroom — -both large and lofty apartments, constituting a sepa- 

 rate portion of the cave, parallel with the length of Pinto's Chasm. In 

 the Ballroom we have worked back opposite the entrance, having fol- 

 lowed a course roughly outlined by the letter U. 



I have thus run hastily over the greater part of the ground open to 

 the public, in order to give an idea of its extent and nomenclature. To 

 describe each figure and room separately is impossible. The best I can 

 do is to try to give some general notion of the character of the orna- 

 mental formations of crystalline rock which render this cave without a 

 peer in the world, perhaps, for the startling beauty and astonishing va- 

 riety of its interior. Some caves — the Mammoth is an example- — are 

 completed by the simple digging out of their vaults; no subsequent 

 growth of new rock supervenes to decorate their hard and changeless 

 walls. There the sense of vast vacancy, of awful silence, of dreadful, 

 lonely darkness, strikes the heart with awe, and impresses the mind by 

 its utter intangibility. Here there is nothing of the sort. Objects are 

 near at hand, suggest familiar forms, and instead of vague terror you 

 feel a comfortable and lively entertainment. 



Where conditions of dryness and ventilation are favorable, and the 

 percolation of water is just right, stalactites and stalagmites w r ill form 



