glare of the torches,--the only light
on the river of Erebus. It was quite easy to believe there were myriads
of spirits flitting around, and stretching out their weird arms to carry
us down to bottomless Hades.

There is another very interesting cave, which is not so frequently
visited by travellers, who when they have seen _the big thing_, are only
anxious to rush away again. It is not so extensive as the Mammoth, but
infinitely more beautiful and more inaccessible, the descent having to
be accomplished by ladders; but once down, it is a fairy-land, a
continuous scene of rapturous enchantment. The stalactites simulate the
most exquisite parterre of flowers, the most magnificent forest of
crystallized trees, the most wondrous marble carving, even to that
perfection of art which shrouds the figure in transparent drapery, like
"the statue of the Dead Christ" at Naples; nor was Apollo's charm
unknown there. Our guide tapped upon these magic crystals, and produced
the sweetest harmony ear ever heard, or at least it sounded so.

The walls of the chambers and passages were encrusted with the
stalactite flowers. They could be broken off their stems, and as so few
visitors ventured down, the guide allowed me to take one. One chamber
was absolutely curtained with this marvellous formation of petrified
water, and when the guide held the light behind the scene, it produced
the effect of being draped in the purest amber. These drooping curtains,
some fifty feet in height, emitted the most musical tones when struck.
If the physician had brought his patients to these fairy bowers, he
might, I think, have succeeded in sending them home quite cured, but I
believe the cave had not been discovered then.

With a brilliant light the spot was perfectly lovely, and the atmosphere
was that of constant, unchanged temperature, which puts the human lungs
in a state of beatitude. I should not in the least object to live in
that paradise of crystal flowers and adamantine forms, the most
beautiful that the imagination of man has ever conceived to be curtained
in living amber, and pillowed--well, I must admit that--in dust; but it
was such _clean_ dust.... The texture of these stalactites, when
examined by daylight, resembles alabaster, thus the leaves, flowers,
sprigs, are perfectly beautiful. Nor are these caves without their
incidents of life's drama. The grave and the gay have been enacted here
as elsewhere. The episode of the physician and h