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Updated: June 12, 2025
A wide, lofty structure, composed of masses of stalactites and unhewn blocks of stone, formed a deep grotto at the end of the hall, whence peered the gigantic head of a monster whose open jaws formed the fireplace of the chimney.
The effect is striking and panoramic; the grotto cheerful; floored with fine sand; the roof groined like Gothic, whence the few clear drops which filter through form here and there the fantastic stalactites common to such localities. The natives report the cave to be the residence of a fairy queen; and they show her bed, pillow, and other of her household furniture.
"My visit was brief, for, though the palace of Jonah had a sepulchral grandeur about it a mighty cavern beneath the waves yet the glittering stalactites which studded the roof, and the cold columns of ice supporting its halls, nearly froze me, and at length I made ready to depart. "An escort of 'thrashers, or grampuses, accompanied me.
Since then there has been no such picturesque object to lead the visitor through the recesses of the cavern and show the stalactites; that office is now performed by the innkeeper of the hotel on the Alp. The cave of S. Verena is one of the favourite pilgrim resorts in Switzerland. It is near Soleure, and lies in a valley of a spur of the Jura.
This slope, in which are cut several steps, rests upon a hard, compact, and crystalline stalagmitic floor. Upon turning to the right, we come to the Hall of Columns, the most beautiful of all. Here the floor bristles with stalagmites, which in several places are connected with the stalactites that depend from the ceiling. This room is about 50 feet square.
To walk near the forest would mean to encounter huge mounds of snow hiding the levelled logs and boulders, stalactites of ponderous icicles depending from the tree trunks where the openings faced the light and the sun; farther in, and once safely past these glacial outposts, scarcely any signs of storm appeared; last year's leaves, still matted together underfoot, were tangled with the green vine of the creeping linnaea and a rare root of the lustrous winter-green.
Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by presenting to themselves on indifferently paved coach-house accessible from the street by a pair of folding-gates; on the left of the coach-house, occupying its width, any large London tailor's or linendraper's plate-glass window reaching to the ground; within the window, on two rows of inclined plane, what the coach-house has to show; hanging above, like irregular stalactites from the roof of a cave, a quantity of clothes the clothes of the dead and buried shows of the coach-house.
How he could enter, from below, a water-logged cave, does not appear to have been explained. In the summer months they are consequently filled with vast masses of ice broken up into a thousand fantastic forms, and presenting by their lucidity a singular contrast to the sombre vaults and massive stalactites of the cavern.
For carbonate of lime is a widely-spread substance, and is met with under very various conditions. All sorts of limestones are composed of more or less pure carbonate of lime. The crust which is often deposited by waters which have drained through limestone rocks, in the form of what are called stalagmites and stalactites, is carbonate of lime.
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 Abode of the Fairies is a similar, though smaller room, with The Tower of Babel for a handsome show-piece.
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