THE STANDARD GUIDE. 
MATANZAS VOPANTAS JN DAYS GONE BY, 
ebullition. The trip to the caves is usually made in volantas, the peculiar 
long-shafted, high-wheeled vehicles once in universal use in Cuba. The 
body is swung low between the wheels, which are widely separated and 
are six or seven feet high, so that it is impossible for the vehicle to turn 
over, while the immense circumference of the wheels give ea.se of move¬ 
ment on the roughest of roads. The horse harnessed between the shafts 
is led by the cochero, who rides on another horse hitched with traces out¬ 
side the shafts; sometimes there is a third horse on the opposite side of 
the shaft horse. The hemp fields passed here are a German enterprise. 
The admission fee to the caves is one dollar. The caves are remarkable 
for the stalactite and stalagmite formations, which are exceedingly bril¬ 
liant in the electric light which illuminates the cavern throughout. The 
caves extend for some three miles, and contain more than thirty separate 
chambers or halls, the chief of which is the Gothic Temple, 250 feet long 
and 80 feet wide, with immense columns. The new part of the caves is 
practically a repetition of the old. The caverns were discovered in 1861. A 
Chinese workman, extracting limestone from the ground for a kiln nearby, 
lost his crowbar, which, slipping from his grasp, disappeared in the earth; 
and investigation developed the existence of the caves. The name Bellamar 
came from that of a cluster of villas overlooking the harbor. In the caves 
the process of crystallization, which is continuous, is due to the filtration 
of water. As the water drips, it carries in solution minute particles of 
limestone, which harden as carbonate of lime and crystallize. As each drop 
pauses before falling, it deposits a particle, thus forming the stalactite 
which hangs down; and another deposit taking place where the drop falls, 
forms the stalagmite which rises from below; the whole process resemb¬ 
ling the formation of icicles; the two parts sometimes unite and form aeon- 
