wball Room, the likeness to winter appears again, in the knots
strongly resembling snowballs stuck all over the ceiling. And in
Cleveland's Cabinet I found some singularly beautiful specimens of
alabaster formations. One kind seemed to be literally growing from the
ceiling as a vegetable would, and looked more than anything else like
short, thick stalks of celery. If an ordinary stalk of celery were
split, so that its natural tendency to curl over backward could be
freely exercised, it would give a very good idea of the shape of some
of the gypsum flowers, except that these are not often longer than four
inches, and in that length frequently curl so as to make a complete
circle. They have the same fibrous appearance as celery, and are as
white as snow.

When five or six of these stalks--if I may call them so--start from one
point, and curve outward in different directions from a common centre,
they frequently form beautiful rosettes. Imagine one of the common
tiger-lilies, which, instead of its thin, red curving petals, has stalks
of celery, curving as much, but broken off square at the ends; then
imagine the celery to be of the purest conceivable white; and you have a
tolerable conception of one of these beautiful alabaster flowers.

This alabaster growth is found only in a few places throughout the cave;
when it is in chambers or spaces in which the atmosphere is very dry, it
invariably has a beautiful fibrous texture like wood or celery, and the
curved form; but if the atmosphere is damp, it forms on the ceiling in
round nodules, from two to three inches in diameter, as in the Snowball
Room.

In the Gothic Arcade there is a sort of colonnade formed along the side
of the tunnel by the meeting of the down-growing stalactites and the
upward-growing stalagmites; the two together having formed slender
columns of spar, from three to six feet in height. One group of these,
about eight feet high, which is the most beautiful in the cave, is
called the Gothic Chapel. In many of the formations, it is very
difficult to trace even the remotest resemblance to the objects after
which they have been named; but in one instance, that of a stalactite
called the "Elephant's Head," the resemblance is remarkable.

Ordinarily it is the custom for one guide to conduct a party of four or
five persons into the cave. I dislike over-officious guides and the
hackneyed comparisons and wordy wonder of gabbling tourists in grand
and solemn plac