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I acknowledged to myself that one of us had been flat that day, and had infected the other; but which was the original flat one? Some minds are like caves of stalactite and stalagmite, rich in treasures of beauty, the existence of which you may never suspect because you bring no light yourself to dispel the darkness that conceals them.
Really, considering that we thus have a contemporary fashion-plate, so to say, whilst there are likewise the numerous stencilled hands elsewhere on view, and even, as I have seen with my own eyes at Niaux in the sandy floor, hardened over with stalagmite, the actual print of a foot, we are brought very near to our palaeolithic forerunners; though indefinite ages part them from us if we reckon by sheer time.
There is something sublime in the contemplation of this steady persistence of Nature, this undeviating march to a goal; and as we gaze upon the embryo stages of the petrifaction, stalagmite patiently lifting itself upward, stalactite as patiently bending down to the remote but inevitable union, we might almost fancy them sentient agents in the marvellous transformation.
We are informed also by Sir C. Lyell of a recent important discovery near Troyes, France. In the Grotto d'Arcès, a human jaw-bone and teeth have been found imbedded with Elephas primigenius, Ursus spelaeus, Hyaena spelaea, and other extinct animals, under layers of stalagmite.
The cave was by no means extremely cold, that is to say, it was rather above than below the freezing point, and the splashing of drops of water was audible on all sides; so that, if Christian spoke the truth, it was sad to be so often reminded of Legree's plaintive soliloquy in the opening pages of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin, the explanation, I suppose, might be that the drops of water, falling on the top of the column or stalagmite, run down the sides, and carry with them some melted portion from the upper part of the column, and after a course of a few yards become so far refrigerated as to form ice.
"And you stand there like a stalagmite. Why, girl, look at yourself!" "Darned if she don't look like a pitcher I seen som'er's on an almanac," Gus declared. "Aha! A man with a soul! A human being who sees beauty where I see it. An artist with my fire!" Gray burst into infectious laughter, and the others joined him.
The south end of the cave rises by a steep slope to within a foot of the ceiling with which it is connected by short but heavy columns of dripstone, and another line of pillars of graduated height meets this at right angles near the middle and ends in an immense stalagmite that stands at the foot of the slope like a grand newel post.
At the top, a layer of stalagmite varying in thickness from 1 to 15 inches, which sometimes contained bones, such as the reindeer's horn, already mentioned, and an entire humerus of the cave-bear. Secondly. Next below, loam or bone-earth, of an ochreous red colour, with angular stones and some pebbles, from 2 to 13 feet in thickness. Thirdly.
There were no stalactites and columns such as M. Morin had found in August 1828, nor even the low stalagmite which Pictet saw in 1822. The summers of 1828 and 1859 were exceptionally hot, and this fact has been held to account for the smaller quantity of ice seen in those years.
There was no stalagmite in the grotto, and M. Lartet, an experienced investigator of ossiferous caverns in the south of France, came to the conclusion that all the bones and soil found in the inside were artificially introduced.
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