owable to
touch nothing, except the ornaments which have loosened and dropped by
their own weight. These are often hard enough to bear transportation.

After you leave Alma's Bower, the cave again becomes very rugged.
Beautiful combinations of gypsum and spar may still be seen occasionally
overhead: but all round you rocks and stones are piled up in the wildest
manner. Through such scraggy scenery, you come to the Rocky Mountains,
an irregular pile of massive rocks, from 100 to 150 feet high. From
these you can look down into Dismal Hollow--deep below deep--the most
frightful looking place in the whole cave. On the top of the mountain is
a beautiful rotunda, called Croghan Hall, in honor of the proprietor.
Stalactites surround this in the richest fringe of icicles, and lie
scattered about the walls in all shapes, as if arranged for a museum. On
one side is a stalagmite formation like a pine-tree, about five feet
high, with regular leaves and branches; another is in a pyramidal form,
like a cypress.

If you wind down the mountains on the side opposite from that which you
ascended, you will come to Serena's Arbor, which is thirteen miles from
the entrance of the cave, and the end of this avenue. A most beautiful
termination it is! In a semicircle of stalactite columns is a fountain
of pure water spouting up from a rock. This fluid is as transparent as
air; all the earthy particles it ever held in suspension, having been
long since precipitated. The stalactite formations in this arbor are
remarkably beautiful.

One hundred and sixty-five avenues have been discovered in Mammoth Cave,
the walk through which is estimated at about three hundred miles. In
some places, you descend more than a mile into the bowels of the earth.
The poetic-minded traveller, after he has traced all the labyrinths,
departs with lingering reluctance. As he approaches the entrance,
daylight greets him with new and startling beauty. If the sun shines on
the verdant sloping hill, and the waving trees, seen through the arch,
they seem like fluid gold; if mere daylight rests upon them, they
resemble molten silver. This remarkable richness of appearance is
doubtless owing to the contrast with the thick darkness, to which the
eye has been so long accustomed.

As you come out of the cave, the temperature of the air rises thirty
degrees instantly (if the season is summer), and you feel as if plunged
in a hot vapor bath; but the effects of this are salutar