This room was found to be forty-eight feet long, the irregular width varied from fourteen to thirty feet and the height from four and one-half to ten feet. The crystal water basin is especially beautiful and the water so clear that we stood looking into it with disappointment, being thirsty and thinking it dry, until the guide laughingly dipped and offered a cupful. The basin is the segment of a circle rounding beneath a massive, overhanging crystal ledge of wonderful beauty, and is nine feet long by two in width. This room and the Stairway into it are alone worthy of a visit, but there is much that is finer still.
Out of Gypsy Camp by way of Gunny Sack Crawl, so named by the workmen who spread gunny sacks to relieve the torture of crawling over the beautiful floor of sharp crystals, we enter the first chamber, where active operation is still maintained and certain branches of the great decorative industry of the cave may be carefully studied. This operative chamber, which is unnamed, would no doubt be called a factory in the east, but in its own locality would more likely be referred to as The Works.
The next chamber entered is Crystal Flat, whose floor is completely covered with immense crystal blocks, and the wonderful crystal ceiling is exceedingly fine. But time being limited we must pass on into the Lake Room, where is Crystal Lake, the largest body of water in the cave. It is about thirty feet long by fifteen wide and its greatest depth is said to be ten feet. The water is cold and clear, and the gold fish introduced as an experiment three years ago are said to have grown rapidly but not yet turned white, and are not known to have become blind.
The Bridal Veil. [Page 187.]
At some little distance from Crystal Lake, and not within the same range of vision, although in the same room, is Dry Lake, which to the surprise of the guide we found to be not dry, but full of limpid water through which we could distinctly see the delicate clusters of crystals it is depositing. They are of a pale honey yellow and are called Gum-drops on account of the resemblance to that variety of confection.
The name Dry Lake was given because in blasting out a passage a misdirected shot went through the bottom of the Lake, which in consequence was soon drained; but the heavily charged water has sealed up the unfortunate break, and resumed its interrupted work. The ceiling drops to a height of little more than three feet directly above the Lake margin, and is a beautiful crystal mass, which at a little distance down the sloping floor appears as the background for a fine piece of cave statuary called The Bridal Veil, and formed of cream-tinted dripstone. Not a great deal of imagination is required to see a slender girlish figure completely enveloped in the flowing folds of a wedding veil that falls lightly about her feet. The figure itself is three feet ten inches in height and stands on an almost flat circular base of the same material, that measures nine inches in depth and two feet eight inches in diameter. At times the water rises sufficiently to cover the base, in proof of which it left a fringe-like border of small sharp crystals, such as could be formed only beneath the water's surface. Most of this border has, unfortunately, been chiseled off for specimens, but will be renewed in time if left undisturbed; and that condition can easily be secured with a few feet of wire netting.
To one side of this room is a most daintily beautiful alcove so profusely decorated with fragile forms of dripstone that a passage through it without causing damage is extremely difficult. This alcove is about twenty-five feet in either direction, with a sloping floor almost covered with stalagmitic growths above the earlier deposit of sharp crystals, and many of these rise in slender columns to the glass-like ceiling, which varies in height from three to six feet and is thickly studded with small stalactites of both varieties—the pointed, solid form, and those of uniform size, which are always hollow like a pipe stem. The central ornament is the Chimes, a musical group of stalactites which is scarcely more beautiful than Cleopatra's Needle, at a distance of a few feet to one side, a transparent column four feet in height and having an average circumference of seventeen inches.
The Chimes. [Page 188.]