if
they should fail.

The small nephew went on a reconnoitering expedition to the end of the
passage, and reported that the jump-off there was higher than himself
but he could get down. I now crawled through the hole and found the
passage to be a "crawl" or rather a "sprawl," from fifteen to eighteen
inches high, but having an ample width varying from three to six feet.
The smooth, straight floor has a steep downward inclination and is
thickly covered with dust.

Having reached the widest portion, which is near the end, Herbert
directed me to turn, so as to come down the jump-off feet first, where
there was a little difficulty in landing, as the perpendicular wall,
which proved to be almost five feet high, offered only one projecting
help, and that within a few inches of the base; but in obedience to his
advice to "reach one foot a little farther down and then drop," I
advanced the right one, to be told not that, but the other, and was soon
down where it was possible to observe with interest that the right foot
had been swinging above an open fissure. We stood in a wide crevice
running at right angles to the obnoxious passage we had just quit, and
immediately found a guide's mark on a large rock, and others followed at
intervals of a few feet over extremely "rough country" as the guides
say. Everywhere the work of water was apparent, not in the crystal
deposits of still water as in other portions of the cave, but the
erosion due to its rushing through. Carefully following the marks, they
led into a cross-crevice that took us under Rainy Chamber, and ends
there by widening into a circular chamber of about fifty feet width in
either direction, and rising to a height of nearly fifty feet in a fine
dome. Down the wall from near the top of the dome there appears to flow
a beautiful waterfall showing a variety of colors in the straight lines,
as if from refraction. The fall is, of course, dripstone, and I knew we
had found Niagara, although we had gone beyond the reach of the guide's
voice almost at the start. A huge rock directly under the dome has
received the falling drip until it represents a mountain cataract. These
deposits testify to the great age of the chamber they adorn, as they
were necessarily not commenced until all heavy flow ceased, and in
Crystal Cave the accumulation of dripstone is so slow that it is said
six years' observation can detect no increase whatever.

Several small passages at the floor level g