This chamber proved to be a little gem; small
but high, and beautifully adorned with calcite crystal. Down a wall of
red onyx on one side clear water flows into a basin in the irregular,
rocky floor, just behind the bowlder we had used for a hand-rest at the
entrance; the perfectly transparent water in the basin appears to be
only a few inches deep, but measures three feet, and is several degrees
colder than the air, which in this portion of the cave is warm. The
other wall of this room is an almost perpendicular bank of the soft dark
red clay, in which small selenite crystals are sprouting like plants in
a garden.
Suddenly we heard a heavy, rolling noise like distant thunder, and
asking if it were possible to hear a thunder storm so far below the
surface, were told it was the protest of angry bats against a further
advance on the quarters to which they have retreated from the main body
of the cave, and their orders were obeyed: so of what may be in that
direction, we gained no positive knowledge besides bats, and the fact
that, small as they are, their great numbers make them dangerous when
angry. Returning to the gallery and continuing the journey down over
slippery rock and slender ladders we came at length to the bottom of the
Gulf of Doom, into which we had looked from the room now high above us;
and we needed no stimulating help to the imagination to pronounce it a
fit termination to an artist's troubled dream.
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