ciiap. viii. 
THE CANGO CAVERNS. 
199 
geraniums growing in their native state. The horse-shoe 
and plain-leaved scarlet were quite large shrubs, sometimes 
six or seven feet high. The dark oak-leaved kind grew 
vigorously. The ivy-leaved variety spread its creeping 
branches over the adjacent trees and opened its pink blossoms 
in great abundance. In other places I noticed several of 
the finer leaved Pelargoniums , with small and delicately 
pencilled flowers. 
About noon we left the stream, and, leading our horses 
some distance up the mountain’s side, reached the entrance to 
the Cango Caverns. Having provided ourselves with guides 
and large candles, inserted in the end of bamboo canes, we 
proceeded along a passage about six feet wide, on an uneven 
and slippery path, for nearly forty yards. We then came 
to a precipice, which we descended by means of a rude 
sort of ladder, for about thirty feet, and then found ourselves 
in a spacious subterranean hall or chamber, from sixty to a 
hundred feet wide, and fifty feet high; but, though our party 
was large and our lights numerous, it was not easy to judge 
of dimensions under such circumstances. This chamber is 
called after the discoverer of the cavern, Yan Zil’s Hall. In 
different places parts of the dark bluish-coloured original lime¬ 
stone, or schistous rock, appeared, but the sides were nearly 
covered with calcareous incrustations, and the roof was 
hung with stalactites of varied form, but chiefly small and 
short. A number of apertures or chasms, some of them three 
or four feet wide, opened into passages leading to other smaller 
chambers or grottoes, some covered with recently crystallised 
stalactites, which reflected and multiplied our lights like the 
cut glass of a chandelier. In others the crystallisations were 
in a state of decomposition. We visited some exceedingly 
beautiful grottoes on the left-hand side of the large entrance 
hall, and then proceeded further towards the interior of the 
mountain, passing sometimes through a series of chambers 
