64 MYOLA CHAP. 
countless ages, the greater or less amount of iron in 
the water forming delicately-traced patterns on them 
from ruddy brown to shades of yellow and white. Tall 
stalagmites, nine, twelve, and twenty feet high, looked 
like monuments carved into every shape and form. 
Leaving these behind, we came into more lofty, black, 
and gloomy chambers, their spacious floors paved with 
small gray pebbles. There seemed no end to them, one 
succeeding another. Here and there a ray of sunlight 
would come through a crevice in the rock above, and 
slanting downwards would catch a projecting rock, 
striking it with a brilliant lustre and making the dark- 
ness below more horribly intense. It was always 
under such crevices that bones were found. Here, too, 
dangled down masses of rope-like roots forming columns 
weird and snake -like in their writhings. After some 
hours, we came out into daylight again, and how scorching 
the rays of the sun felt as we made our way scrambling 
and tripping over and under rocks and bushes to where 
the two buggies had been left ! 
After lunch we started off to some other caves, at 
the entrance of which were hanging bright, green 
bunches of so-called native grapes, tempting -looking, 
but probably very poisonous and nasty. Here by 
accident I put my hand on the largest centipede I had 
ever seen. There is a considerable descent into the 
caves ; courage is easily produced in theory but it was 
no joke scrambling down this small and very rickety 
ladder of rope-like roots, amongst loose and rugged rocks, 
which required something more than nerves and care- 
ful handling. These caves were even more beautiful 
than the others, some being more than i6o feet in 
diameter. The earth here seemed to have been rent 
by internal convulsions, for it was split up into deep 
fissures and gloomy-looking caverns of inky blackness. 
Digitized by LnOOQ IC 
