THE SHAWL CAVE.
About 30 yards from the Sparkling rock is the Shawl Cave. It is approached through a passage from six to eight feet high and two to four feet wide, containing numerous small but pretty grottoes. The Shawl Cave is very interesting. To the left of the entrance is a grotesque pillar with little domes of snowy whiteness and masses of stalactite. The cave is about 25 feet long, 15 feet high, and from 12 to 15 feet wide. It contains three magnificent "shawls." One is 14 feet long, 18 inches deep, and one-sixth of an inch thick, and in the blending of colours represents tortoise-shell. The other two are not quite as large as the first-mentioned. They are straw-coloured, varied with rich brown. They hang at right angles from the side of a convex sloping roof, and the colouring runs from end to end in parallel lines, but the bands of colour vary in depth. For instance, the first piece of the shawl—say one inch and a half from the roof—may be pure white formation, of lime, or carbonate of lime coloured with oxide of iron which gradually becomes paler and paler. The next two inches may be light yellow, spotted with brown. The next strip may be fox-colour, and so on, until the design is completed. For the most part, the cave "shawls" are of uniform thickness, like sheets of opaque glass slightly corrugated transversely. The opposite wall is nearly perpendicular. At each end of the cave is a grotto. One is low down and gloomy-looking; the other lofty, going up into the roof and full of formation, some of which is like frost work. The stalactites are immense. From the further wall are sloping terraces, gradually enlarging towards the base underneath the hanging shawls. There are also some remarkable clumps of formation. One is like a giant's foot; another resembles the skull of a wolf, or of some other animal related to the canine tribe.
About seven yards north from the Shawl Cave is a cavern 20 feet broad, 30 yards long, and from 12 to 14 feet high, the principal object in which is "The Lady's Finger." Under a shelving rock fringed with stalactites of all the prevailing colours, and almost every variety of shape, the "finger" forms the extremity of a stalagmite about 12 inches high, and similar in figure to a feminine forearm in a sleeve, with coral trimmings. The forearm is white, and the chubby hand is of a waxy-looking flesh colour. The thumb and the index finger point upward. According to the Talmud, "man is born with his hands clenched, and dies with his hands wide open;" in reference to which one of the Rabbinical sages remarks—"Entering life he desires to grasp everything; leaving the world, all that he possessed has slipped away." This hand with the lady's finger, however, is not grasping, and it points upwards. The modern science of chiromancy, according to A. R. Craig, M.A., in his interesting book "Your Luck is in Your Hand," divides hands into seven classes: "1. The hand elementary, or hand with a large palm; 2. The hand necessary, or spatulated; 3. The hand artistic, or conical; 4. The useful or square hand; 5. The philosophical, or knotted hand; 6. The psychological, or pointed hand; 7. The mixed hand." It would be difficult to class the hand with "the lady's finger" in any of the foregoing divisions, and it would puzzle one skilled in palmistry, and who regards the human hand as a mirror of the mind, to use it even in the way phrenologists use the casts of bull-necked, animal-headed felons. The index finger is long, the pollex (thumb) is short; the medius (middle) is wanting, and so are the annularis (ring finger) and the auricularis (little finger), "so named by the Romans because of its utility in cleansing the ear." The visitor, therefore, must not expect to find here a hand like a model of perfection on a Greek statue; but he will see a remarkable alabaster extremity, sufficiently well formed to be called "the lady's finger." The rocky bank, which is coloured with several shades of brown, and veined with formation, is also flecked with white, like snow. At one end of the cave the view closes with long-sparkling stalactites—those nearest being brown and flesh-coloured. Behind them is pure white formation which sets off to great advantage the beautifully-tinted stalactites sparsely scattered about the cave. The other end of the cavern gradually tones off to sombre rocks of grey and brown.
At the end of the Lady's Finger Cave is a charming grotto, and, above, the rocks are like fine coral in various shades of red and grey. Inside the grotto are stalagmites thick at the base and with elegant stalactites resting on them. Some are pure white, and others are covered with fine tracery. In front is a perfect stalactite which descends to within an inch of a perfect stalagmite just underneath it, and aptly illustrates the process of their growth. On the floor are pretty hillocks of somewhat dismal-looking matter which, on close inspection, is seen to be made of coralline figures and sparkling crystal atoms. In the foreground is a fine stalagmite, fitted all over with minute coral. This group, protected by wire netting, is specially interesting because it is unblemished. All round the approaches are little bunches of stalactites like epaulettes.
After travelling west about nine yards, ascending five steps, and then proceeding 14 yards north, the tourist arrives at a cave containing a very conspicuous column called "Lot's Wife."
