In winter the Spring of Youth Room takes on a complete coating of ice,
with icicles of all sizes hanging from the ceiling and projections. The
effect is described as being wonderfully beautiful.
Further down Total Depravity Passage we were not urged to go, because at
that season of the year it is wet and difficult, without any sufficient
promise of a brilliant compensation for the achievement of such a
journey. But the Spring of Youth Room, or as it is generally called, the
Spring Room, is more than ample justification for the existence of the
passage, and would still be if that passage were several miles in length
and the attraction located at the most distant limit.
[Illustration: Wall in Spring Room. Page 32.]
The various passages in Marble Cave are by no means alike or even
similar; some having been opened by the action of water assisted only by
acid carried in solution; while others are the unmistakable crevices of
earthquake origin, afterwards enlarged, or perhaps only remodeled, as we
might say, by the water's untiring energy in changing the position of
rock masses without obliterating evidences of original design.
A glance at the map shows the sudden breaking off of the various
passages represented; the end, however, is not of the passages
themselves, but only of the exploration or the survey of them, and there
is a possibility that future developments will lead to the discovery of
more caves than are yet known.
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