Before we had traversed a tithe of the extent of these capacious caverns we understood how the fifteen hundred Moorish refugees, men, women, and children, with their flocks and herds, an immense quantity of grain, and many precious belongings, had found hiding-place within.
The Manacor Caves are fantastic and wonderful. Those of Artá are stupendous, overwhelming in their gloom and grandeur. Any conception I had ever formed of cavernous magnificence was far exceeded; and to me the Caves of Artá were infinitely more impressive than the Caves of Manacor. When I tried to express this, Amoras said devoutly:—
"The Cave of the Dragon is an oratory chapel. This is a cathedral."
Countless glories are concealed in the vast caverns. Stalactites so large that to try to calculate the length of time occupied in their formation makes the brain reel. Statues as complete in detail as though carven by the chisel of a sculptor. Cascades of glistening crystal. The huge crouching figure of a winged Mephistopheles, and in the Hall of the Banners flags—marvels of immobile drapery—that stood out at right angles from the pillar whence they were suspended.
It was in the Hall of the Banners that Amoras, warning us not to follow, disappeared from sight, leaving us in the dark. Then from a height came strange noises designed to strike terror into the breasts of the timid. Then the light of a Roman candle threw into weird effect the great maze of stalactite pillars, cones, and festoons that rose about and above us to unimagined heights.
But perhaps the most beautiful if not the most amazing of the sights was that contained in the Salon of the Queen of the Columns, where, in a lofty hall, there stood alone, as though conscious of its exquisite beauty and holding aloof, a stately pillar twenty-two metros—over sixty feet—in height. About the base were grouped curiously modelled clusters of flowers, and above, as far as the eye could distinguish, the same delicate tracing was revealed.
"Under it we are as nothing," Amoras had said reverently, as he stood beneath it, and one felt that had he worn a hat he would have uncovered before the column.
There was a delightfully nerve-soothing effect in the absolute stillness of the caves. Not a sound from the outer world could penetrate these vast recesses.
"All the neighbours are asleep," Amoras replied drily when the Man remarked on the silence.