THE LUCINDA CAVE.
After travelling a few yards south from the grottoes the visitor arrives at the Lucinda Cave. The hall is from 5 to 15 feet wide and from 6 to 25 feet high. The approach to the cave is through limestone rocks. The path has a gentle slope, and in some places the walls are besprinkled with a white substance like wool. Near the centre of the passage is a hole in the roof partly lined with formation which sparkles like a starlit sky. A little farther on is a descent of four steps through a passage, the walls of which glitter with great brilliancy.
About 25 yards from the Lucinda Cave, south-south-west, is a magnificent spectacle. The roof is densely crowded with stalactites of every type of beauty. On each side are crevices of dazzling splendour, and on the floors of which brilliants have been showered like hail. The largest remain in the centre, and the corners and other remote places are heaped with diamond drift. In one place in the lower cave is a bank made of formation washed from the hall above, thickening to the base at an angle of about 40°, and studded with cave gems. Between the jewelled floors and the superincumbent rocks are stalagmites of pure white calcareous alabaster. At the end of this passage are three steps, which it is necessary to ascend in order to reach the Lucinda Chamber, which was discovered on the 7th February, 1881, and is named after the wife of the curator of the caves.
The Lucinda Cave is from 10 to 25 feet high, from 50 to 70 feet wide, and about 90 feet long. Its entrance junctions with the steps to Katie's Bower. To reach the Lucinda Cave from the junction, the visitor passes over a level floor, like cement, about 12 feet in length. This cave is remarkable for its scenic grandeur. The spectator stands in mute admiration, and gazes upon the magnificent sight like one who is spellbound. The beauty is Brobdignagian in its proportions. The figures are all colossal. There are immense stalactites and stalagmites of every hue. An enormous mass of formation droops from the ceiling to the summit of a stalagmitic mound upon which it rests. It is like a series of suddenly congealed waterfalls, and the groundwork below is gracefully rippled on the outer surface, and fringed with stalactites. The mound previously mentioned rests upon another of larger size, of equally graceful contour, and besprent with brilliants which sparkle like immense diamonds. To the right is a cascade of formation which has trickled and solidified from rock to rock and from ledge to ledge in graceful curves from the roof to the floor.
Those who have seen water arrested by congelation on an extensive weir, and rendered opaque by hoar, can form a tolerably correct idea of the kind of beauty here represented in stone. To the left of the frozen waterfall is a bower of sparkling substances, and at its extremity is a recess, from the farthest visible point of which can be seen magnificent clusters of stalactites, of rich and varied colouring. This bower is more chastely beautiful than any ever possessed by Oriental potentate. The walls on the left side are richly draped with sheets of formation of uniform thickness, hanging from the roof like shawls or scarves. This mineral drapery is opaque, striped and flecked with russet and reddish brown, and edged with white as pure as virgin snow. It is guarded by a fence of iron rods and galvanised wire; consequently it is impossible to make a close and minute examination of its interior, but the general effect is fascinating. In one of the recesses is a terraced rock covered with reddish formation, like a cascade, which certainly is not less beautiful than were the Pink Terraces of Rotomahana. A little beyond the cascade the same kind of formation ornaments a massive pillar, which constitutes one of the principal features of the cave.
In the foreground is a hall which leads to an unexplored region below, and the entrance to which is guarded by a fence to prevent accidents. The floor is curiously formed by a series of basins, the rims of which are shaped into every variety of curve and indentation, running in and out like frilling, not with regular curved lines like escallops, but representing in miniature the waterlines of a quiet harbour with large bays and pretty inlets and creeks and reaches, without a single straight line. The edges of these basins are about two inches in height, covered on the outside by sparkling limestone, like delicate coral, thickening towards the floor. Inside the formation is still more beautiful, with coralline matter of the same general character swelling out to the most graceful concavity. There is perfection in every segment, and in every tiny cell lurks tremulous light.
