BEAUTIFUL INCRUSTATIONS OF LIMESTONE. 219 



of the evaporation of all the water before it accumulated in too heavy 

 a drop on the tip of the pendant that its burden of lime was building out. 



This varied greatly, however, in different parts of the cave; some 

 rooms, for example, those near the entrance, are almost utterly bare, or 

 adorned only with fungoid tufts of pure clay, which remained after the 

 solid matrix had disappeared. On the other hand, so profuse had been 

 the discharge of water over several ledges that the native rock is wholly 

 concealed under a great "frozen cascade" of deposited material — alabas- 

 ter-white, crystalline, sparkling — which well simulates ice. Elsewhere 

 there is abundant proof that the water dripped rapidly and spattered, 

 producing those curious botryoidal cauliflower-like masses called " vege- 

 table gardens." This was like Luray, as also was the tendency observable 

 everywhere — though rarely well carried out — towards the curtain or rib- 

 bon-like " drapery " form of stalactite, whose gracefully pendent corners 

 make the Virginia cavern so strangely attractive. Much less wall-rock 

 and ceiling is hidden under these water-built accretions, however, here 

 than at Luraj' — showing, probably, that at no time was there so much 

 water present in the rocks as found its way through the Virginian cata- 

 comb. The relatively smaller size of all the excavations at Manitou would 

 confirm this explanation of a condition which might be expected in this 

 dryer climate and superior altitude. 



In one respect this cave far surpasses in beauty its Eastern prototype. 

 The floors of many rooms are laid several inches deep with incrustations 

 of lime-work, which is embroidered in raised ridges of exquisite carving. 

 Again, where water has been caught in depressions, these basins have 

 been lined with a continuous, 'crowding plush of minute lime crystals, 

 like small tufted cushions of yellow and white moss. Such depressed 

 patches occur frequently; moreover, the rapid evaporation of these pools, 

 in confined spaces, has so surcharged the air with carbonated moisture 

 that particles of lime have been deposited on the walls of the pocket in 

 a thousand dainty and delicate forms — tiny stalactites and bunches of 

 stone twigs — until you fancy the most airy of milleporic corals transferred 

 to these recesses. Here often the air seems foggy as your lamp-rays 

 strike it, and the growing filigree work gleams alabaster-white under the 

 spray that is producing its weird and exquisite growth. In this form 

 of minute and frost-like ornamentation, to which the most skilled work of 

 the silversmith would bear no comparison, and where the flowers of the 

 hot-house, or the brilliantly tentacled dwellers in some sunny tide-cove 

 would find their delicate beauty surpassed, this Colorado cavern excels 

 anything I know of anywhere. 



