ber of years I had been familiar with mines and mining operations
in the lead-mining districts of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, and
had there seen some of the most beautiful, though not the largest,
specimens of calcareous spar known to exist. The lime in these
localities being in most instances perfectly pure, the stalactites, to
the length of three feet sometimes, are as free from coloring as
icicles. Sometimes the miners' drift (which compared with the Mammoth
Cave is as a rabbit's burrow to a railway tunnel) is opened into small,
low-roofed caves; and in these, in addition to the translucent
stalactites, there are little hollows in the floor covered with thin
sheets of protocarbonate of lime, no thicker than a pane of
window-glass, and as white as snow. From beneath these the water has
sunk away, leaving a hollow space, and giving the whole precisely the
appearance of those little pools which every one has noticed when a
muddy road suddenly congeals: the pools of water freeze over, and the
water disappears, leaving the ice only a shell over a cavity.

Nothing of this kind, however, is found in the Mammoth Cave. The lime of
which the stalactites are formed being mixed with various oxides and
other impurities, they are all of a dark brown, or gray, or muddy color.
With the exception of some stalactite columns in the "Gothic Arcade,"
which form a fine alcove called the "Gothic Chapel," there are no
stalactites of extraordinary size. There is a stalactite mass (or was
some years ago) in "Uhrig's Cave," in the suburbs of the city of St.
Louis, about twelve feet in height and four feet in diameter, which
exceeds in size anything I saw in the Mammoth Cave.

The gypsum or alabaster flowers are the crowning beauty of the Mammoth
Cave. These are an entirely different formation from the stalactites,
being formed only in a perfectly dry atmosphere, while the stalactites
are necessarily formed in a moist one.

The gypsum is formed by crystallization, and in that process exerts the
same expansive force as ice. Wherever it forms in crevices it fractures
the rocks that enclose it, and protrudes from the crevice; its own bulk
divides, or splits, and curves open, and outward, with much more
tenacity than ice. It seems to have a fibrous texture, in the direction
of which the split always opens.

I found in the "Snowball Room" and in a large chamber called
"Cleveland's Cabinet," a beautiful display of these flowers. In the
Sno