But if you insist upon it he
will go. The passage by which this room has to be reached, if passage it
may be called, must be entered from the Waterfall Room, and a steep
ascent must be made until an elevation of fifty feet is reached above
the bottom of that room. This ascent has been called Hughse's Slide, as
a man of that name once lost his footing at the top and slid on the wet
and very slippery clay all the way to the bottom, leaving a very sleek
trail. The ascent is difficult, as the soft clay is deep and wet and the
sides are reeking and covered also with soft yielding clay. When the top
of the slide is once reached, a low passage six feet wide and two feet
high is discovered, and stooping low, or actually lying flat down, you
enter. The top of the passage is of smooth rock and the bottom is of wet
clay with an occasional variation of sharp gravel. The air is good, and
as a lizard, you start forward. In places the passage widens to ten or
twelve feet and again narrows to six feet.
"In about one hundred feet you encounter a small pond of water filling
the whole width of the passage and extending twenty to thirty feet, but
the guide tells you it is only one foot deep, and calls attention to the
fact that the water does not come within a foot of the roof of the
passage and you can easily keep your chin above it, and with this
assurance through you go.
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