218 AN UNDERGROUND LABYRINTH. 



truding ledges, especially in Canopy Hall, are thus perforated, and the 

 guide will say that they were ground out by revolving pebbles; but it 

 is easy to show the error of this, and demonstrate that the slow action 

 of water and the atmospheric agents that have cut the rest of the cav- 

 ern are also responsible for the " pot-holes." Instead, there will some- 

 times yawn at your feet, in a way likely to startle you, a squarish chasm, 

 or the path will end in the side of a vertical chimney, seeming endless 

 as you attempt to make your candle-beams penetrate the thick darkness 

 which fills the shaft above and below. 



Through several such chimneys or shafts you follow your guide in 

 climbing long ladders or stairways up to a higher or down to a lower level. 

 Clinging to the spidery supports with only a little halo of light about 

 you, both ends of the ladder or the slender bridge hidden from view, and 

 thus apparently unsupported, you thrill with a sense of romantic peril, 

 and take extraordinary interest in what the guide is telling of his first 

 exploration of this subterranean maze, when there was no route to be 

 followed, nor even a ladder to assist his going about ; you wonder more 

 and more not only how such a labyrinth ever was explored, but how its 

 passages can be remembered even with daily practice. I can best picture 

 the tortuous complexity of underground shafts and tunnels, cracks and 

 crannies, by asking you to imagine the atmosphere a solid, and yourself 

 some pygmy following the tangled and criss-crossed interior of the thickly 

 branching twigs of a tree. However, in remote portions of the cave, 

 there exist very large rooms. One of these is two hundred and fifty feet 

 long, and of varying width. Another would be large were it not encum- 

 bered by fallen masses and by drip -stone pillars which are vertically 

 ribbed. A third room, the biggest of all, measures four hundred and fifty 

 feet in length, and is wide at each end, but narrows, hour-glass fashion, 

 in the middle. The ceiling of this chamber is so high that no candle- 

 flame, or even magnesium-light, has ever been strong enough to bring it 

 into view, and the echoes are remarkable. In the greater part of the 

 cave, however, one must continually stoop and. dodge to avoid contact 

 with the sidewalls or the celling. 



It is to the ornamentation that I wish particularly to call attention. 

 This exactly resembles that at Luray, except that it is upon a much 

 smaller scale ; the largest drip-formed pillars in the Colorado cave are said 

 to be not more than twenty feet in height, and few in number. Both 

 stalactites and stalagmites are small, and hang in rows from overhanging 

 ledges, like icicles on eaves in winter. There are also few stalagmites, 

 showing that generally the dripping has been sufficiently slow to allow 



