he declined to consider the subject; saying he
had been directed not to leave us until we were taken safely on the
train, which came sweeping round the curve on time and stopped for us.

CHAPTER XV.

CRYSTAL CAVE CONCLUDED.

According to agreement the guide again met us at the station on the
following morning, for another day in the cave, which we entered with no
unnecessary loss of time, and hurrying through the main entrance
passage, Government Room and Statuary Hall, went down Beaver Slide,
which, on the previous day, we had passed to enter Rocky Run. Our
descent into the crevice took us past those portions known as Suspension
Bridge and Rebecca's Well, and over some very "rough country" to the
most wonderful parts of the cave. Numerous passages open out in various
directions; one to rooms of frost work of great beauty; another to the
Ribbon Room where the drip deposits on the walls are in ribbon-like
stripes of red, yellow, and white, while others yet are ways to the
Catacombs. And it is the Catacombs we particularly wish to see, as they
most perfectly represent the individual character of the cave and have,
as yet, received no injury from either time or man; but is a region as
difficult to travel as the way of the transgressor, and many miles can
be traversed with no prospect of coming to the end. But where locomotion
is so slow and painful, the owner of a pedometer would find that
instrument a discouraging companion and soon learn better than to
consult its record publicly.

The Catacombs are a series of connected fissures and small crevices in
which every inch of exposed surface is covered with clear, translucent,
almost transparent, calcite crystals, neither coated with lime nor
stained with clay; nor even is the pearly lustre dimmed with the
slightest trace of dust. The crystals are very sharp and of all sizes,
ranging from half an inch to three and a half inches in length, the
larger sizes being conspicuously abundant. The entire region is an
enormously large, perfectly formed, and undamaged geode. In reality, the
whole cave is a great cluster of connected geodes, and a similar work
probably does not exist, but if it does, has never been discovered. The
fissures from which it is formed were opened by volcanic violence and
then enlarged, and afterwards decorated by the varied power of water, in
action or repose.

When the storms toward the close of the Tertiary period suddenly
overwhelmed with flo