158 KOTA GLANGGI. 
I do not know how to describe it, language fails me, from the 
fact that there are no familiar objects to which I can liken it. 
Perhaps the dome of St. Paul’s might serve to give some idea of the 
height aud size, but the cave is polysided. It is lighted from a 
grotto-like opening in one of its sides about twenty feet above the 
floor. This opening is backed by a screen of velvety-green foliage 
about thirty feet high, through which the sun’s rays scintillate from 
a wide opening above, so that the interior is illuminated chiefly by 
reflected light, a few small holes in the top of the dome just admit 
enough to prevent the roof being altogether lost in the gloom. The 
angles of this polygon are fluted and columnar and radiate at the 
capital, branch meeting branch, so that the dome is like the many- 
arched roof of the nave of some Gothic cathedral, whilst the drip- 
pings from the limestone have wrought themselves into combina- 
tions of stalactites of endless variety of form. and have decked this 
edifice of nature with more elaborate and fantastic ornamentation 
than all the genius of Gothic art could devise. 
There are no idols of man’s construction, but the floor of this na- 
tural temple is strewn with curious and weird-like forms. There 
is one huge block of stone about fifteen feet square which might 
represent the altar of an ancient race of giants; there are four 
or five upright stones like those of the Druids on Salisbury plains, 
three of which are placed symmetrically at the grotto-like opening, 
one at each side, and one in the middle, as if to guard the entrance: 
one could almost imagine they had been put there by design. 
I do not wonder that the superstitious Malays should have 
sought an explanation in the supernatural : according to them, 
this cave is the home of a great hantw, and the violent wind which 
met us at the entrance was the breath of the angry spirit opposing 
our intrusion. The petrified man referred to by the boatmen is 
simply a block of stone covered with drippings from the limestone 
till its shoulders are smooth, but with no resemblance whatever to 
the human form divine; the oven or furnace is like an oven, but it 
owes its form to the same cause; the slag and the loaves of bread are 
also the result of the same action, the slag consists, as one can see 
on breaking it, of small angular stones which have become rounded 
and cemented together by this process, and the mass really does 
