they did in some caves, and drag in bones through the caves'
mouths; or, again, savages might live in that cave, and bring in animals
to eat, like the wild beasts; and so those bones might be mixed up, as we
know they were, with things which the savages had left behind--like flint
tools or beads; and then the whole would be hardened, by the dripping of
the limestone water, into a paste of breccia just like this in my drawer.
But the bones of the savages themselves you would seldom or never find
mixed in it--unless some one had fallen in by accident from above. And
why? (For there is a Why? to that question: and not merely a How?)
Simply because they were men; and because God has put into the hearts of
all men, even of the lowest savages, some sort of reverence for those who
are gone; and has taught them to bury, or in some other way take care of,
their bones.

But how is the swallow-hole sure to end in a cave?

Because it cannot help making a cave for itself if it has time.

Think: and you will see that it must be so. For that water must run
somewhere; and so it eats its way out between the beds of the rock,
making underground galleries, and at last caves and lofty halls. For it
always eats, remember, at the bottom of its channel, leaving the roof
alone. So it eats, and eats, more in some places and less in others,
according as the stone is harder or softer, and according to the
different direction of the rock-beds (what we call their dip and strike);
till at last it makes one of those wonderful caverns about which you are
so fond of reading--such a cave as there actually is in the rocks of the
mountain of Whernside, fed by the swallow-holes around the mountain-top;
a cave hundreds of yards long, with halls, and lakes, and waterfalls, and
curtains and festoons of stalactite which have dripped from the roof, and
pillars of stalagmite which have been built up on the floor below. These
stalactites (those tell me who have seen them) are among the most
beautiful of all Madam How's work; sometimes like branches of roses or of
grapes; sometimes like statues; sometimes like delicate curtains, and I
know not what other beautiful shapes. I have never seen them, I am sorry
to say, and therefore I cannot describe them. But they are all made in
the same way; just in the same way as those little straight stalactites
which you may have seen hanging, like icicles, in vaulted cellars, or
under the arches of a bridge. The water