166 
FREEZING CAVERN AT ILLETZKAYA-ZASTCHITA. 
Freezing Cavern. — Besides the floor of salt, this spot is marked by two or three 
gypseous hillocks, one of which, on its south side, assisted by artificial excavation, 
is employed by the inhabitants as a cellar 1 . This cavern has the very remarkable 
property of being so intensely cold during the hottest summers, as to be then 
filled with ice, which disappearing with cold weather, is entirely gone in the win- 
ter, when all the country is clad in snow. 
Standing on the heated ground (the thermometer in the shade being then at 
90°Fahr.), we can never forget our sensations, when the poor woman to whom the 
cave belonged, unlocked a frail door, and let loose a volume of such piercing cold 
air, that we could not avoid removing our feet from the influence of its range. 
We afterwards, however, subjected our whole bodies to the cooling process, by 
entering the cave, which, it must be recollected, is on the same level as the 
road-way or street of the village. At three or four paces from the door, on which 
shone the glaring sun, we were surrounded by the half-frozen quass and provi- 
sions of the natives, and a little further on, the chasm (bending slightly) opened into 
a natural vault about twelve to fifteen feet high, ten or twelve paces long, by seven 
or eight in width. This cavern seemed to ramify by smaller fissures into the body 
of the little impending mount of gypsum and marl. The roof of the cavern was 
hung with undripping solid icicles, and the floor might be called a stalagmite of ice 
and frozen earth. As we had no expectation of meeting with such a phenomenon, 
we had left our thermometers at Orenburg, and could not, therefore, observe the 
exact degree of cold below the freezing point. The proofs of intense cold around 
us were, however, abundantly decisive for our general purpose, and we were glad 
to escape in a few minutes from this ice-bound prison, so long had our frames 
been accustomed to a powerful heat. 
In considering the peculiarity of the circumstances attendant upon this freezing 
cavern, we are not yet, we admit, sufficiently provided with accurate data. If, 
as we were assured, the cold is greatest within when the external air is hottest and 
driest, that the fall of rain and a moist atmosphere produce some diminution of 
the cold in the cave, and that upon the setting in of winter the ice disappears en- 
tirely, then, indeed, the problem is very curious. All the inhabitants positively 
1 This phsenomenon ought, correctly speaking, to have been consideied in the concluding chapters, 
where the existing causes are referred to ; but it is so intimately linked on, we conceive, to subterranean 
influence and the subsoil of the tract, that we prefer to speak of it in this place. 
