We
followed our guide down some steps that had been made, into what were to
us unknown regions.
We went along narrow passages and through large rooms for about two
hundred yards, part of the distance being under the road we had just
walked over. We had never been in a cave like this before. The
stalactites which hung from the roof of the cavern, and which at first
we thought were long icicles, were formed by the rain-water as it slowly
filtered through the limestone rock above, all that could not be
retained by the stalactite dropping from the end of it to the floor
beneath. Here it gradually formed small pyramids, or stalagmites, which
slowly rose to meet their counterparts, the stalactites, above, so that
one descended while the other ascended. How long a period elapsed before
these strange things were formed our guide could not tell us, but it
must have been very considerable, for the drops came down so slowly. It
was this slow dropping that made it necessary for us to wear the white
jackets, and now and then a drop fell upon our headgear and on the
"slops." Still we felt sure it would have taken hundreds of years before
we should have been transformed into either stalactites or stalagmites.
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