One of these cones was especially remarkable. It was at least five meters high—Von Allmen said eight—and at the bottom was about four meters in diameter. The base of this cone was entirely hollow. There was a break on one side by which we could enter, and we then stood on a rock floor with a small ice dome or vault overhead. I have seen no other hollow cone like this. The guide lighted a red Bengal fire inside, when the whole pyramid glowed with a delicate pink light, resembling Alpenglühn. Near this cone stood the half of another ice cone. It was quite perfect, and the missing half was cut off perpendicularly, as if with a huge cleaver. A hollow in the base of the remnant showed that this cone must have been originally also a hollow cone, and its destruction was probably due to the change in the temperature of the drip from the roof, at the setting in of the summer thaw.
Just beyond the cones, the ice floor steepens and curls over into a big ice slope, one of the finest I have seen. Von Allmen spoke of this as der gletscher, an expression I never heard applied elsewhere to subterranean ice. On the right side, the slope would be difficult to descend in the darkness. On the left, the slope is gentle and a rock juts out a little way down. Von Allmen insisted on roping—an unnecessary safeguard—but he said: “If you slip, you will probably break an arm or a leg, and then we shall be in a nice mess.” He then cut about twelve steps in the ice, down to the rock, while I shed light on the performance with our torch. We were so completely away from daylight that black was the predominating color; and even the ice was a dark gray, and only appeared white in the high lights. Below the rock, we found a narrow strip on the left side of the ice slope free from ice and blocked with boulders, over which we carefully picked our way down. At the bottom, the ice expanded into a level surface, stretching nearly to the end of the cave. There were only a few fissure columns in this part of the cavern, where the most remarkable feature was the cracks in the rock walls, which were so regular in formation that they almost looked like man’s handiwork. The rocks are free from stalactites, and in fact stalactites seem a good deal of a rarity in glacières.
On retracing our steps, we saw, when the first glimmers of daylight became perceptible, the rocks assume a brilliant blue color, as if they were flooded with moonlight. This effect lasted until near the mouth of the cavern.
HOLLOW CONE AND FISSURE COLUMNS, SCHAFLOCH.
DÉMÉNYFÁLVA JEGBARLANG.
A little west of Poprád, in Northern Hungary, on the railroad between Sillein and Kassa, is the village of Liptós Szt Miklós, to which place I journeyed on the 12th of June, 1896. The conductor was the only man on the train or at any of the stations who would admit that there was a glacière at Déményfálva, and that it was feasible to get into it: every one else professed entire ignorance on the subject. It is perhaps, worth noting at this time that it is always difficult to get any information about glacières; in fact, the advice about cooking a hare might well be applied to glacière hunting: first catch your glacière.
The scenery between Sillein and Miklós was picturesque. The hills were covered with forest. In one place, the railroad ran through a beautiful mountain gorge alongside a river, where a number of rafts were floating down. There were also some primitive ferries, where a rope was stretched across the river, and the force of the current carried the ferryboat across, once it was started. Many peasants were at work in the fields; often in squads. White, blue, brown, and a dash of red were the predominating colors in their dress. The men wore white trousers, made of a kind of blanket stuff, and a leather, heelless moccasin of nearly natural shape. Almost all the women had bare feet; those of the older ones were generally shaped according to Nature’s own form, while those of the younger ones were generally distorted from wearing fashionable shoes. We went past several villages of huts with thatched roofs, something like the Russian villages one sees beyond Moscow, only less primitive.