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On the left you are suddenly confronted by a stalagmitic formation so large and so grand that all others are dwarfed into insignificance. You think of the dome of the Capitol at Washington. You are standing at the sloping base but cannot see the top. Just here the guide announces in an awestruck voice 'Blondy's Throne. And who is Blondy?
Some of the beds of this limestone are between six hundred and seven hundred feet above the sea; but part of this height may possibly be due to an elevation of the land, subsequent to the accumulation of the calcareous sand. The percolation of rain-water has consolidated parts of these beds into a solid rock, and has formed masses of dark brown, stalagmitic limestone.
I never searched for bones in these caves, owing to the absence of the stalagmitic covering which preserves cavern-bones from decay; nor did I take any notice of such as presented themselves without search, for the bergers are in the habit of throwing the carcases of deceased cows into any deep hole in the neighbourhood of the place where the carcases may be found, in consequence of the general belief that living cows go mad if they find the grave of a companion; so that I should probably have made a laborious collection of the bones of the bos domesticus.
Sampson's Palace is the next room in order: here we see some stalagmitic water formation on the left wall and the ceiling is one of the most beautiful yet seen on the trip. "We pass along to Swiss Scenery, a very prettily decorated room fifty feet in length by fifteen in height. The box work is very pretty, shading from yellow to dark brown.
Considering that I had observed a layer of limestone-paste collecting on one of the ice-columns of the Glacière of La Genollière, I could not help imagining that this stalagmitic column had been originally moulded on a norm of that description. It had a girth of 12 feet in the part where we were able to pass the tape round it.
Owing to some alteration in the road, mining operations, or some other cause which I could not ascertain, there has accumulated on the formerly clean stalagmitic floor of the cave a thickness of some 20 feet of surface earth that completely conceals the bottom, and which could not be removed without considerable expense.
The species that I met with were as follows: the great cave bear, the little bear, the hyena, the great cat, the rhinoceros, the ox, the horse, and the stag. The stalagmitic floor is 1½, 2, and 2¼ inches thick. The bones were either scattered or accumulated at certain points. They were generally broken, and often worn and rounded. They appeared to have been rolled with violence by the waters.
I then came to a round hole, apparently artificial, opening through a curtain of stalagmitic formation into a great cavern beyond, which was quite animated and festal with flashes, sparkles, and diamond-lustres, hung in their myriads upon a movement of the eye, these being produced by large numbers of snowy wet stalagmites, very large and high, down the centre of which ran a continuous long lane of clothes and hats and faces; with hasty reluctant feet I somehow passed over them, the cave all the time widening, thousands of stalactites appearing on the roof of every size, from virgin's breast to giant's club, and now everywhere the wet drip, drip, as it were a populous busy bazaar of perspiring brows and hurrying feet, in which the only business is to drip.
The scant moisture slowly makes its way down sloping sides and shelving edges, leaving on each small irregularity a tiny portion of its volume, to deposit an infinitely small charge of solid substance, and the balance finally hangs in moisture less than drops on the growing grains of the under surface. Pop-corn, therefore, is the globular aragonite of the stalagmitic variety.
Three thermometers in various parts of the glacière gave all the same temperature, namely, a fraction under 33° F.: a rough French thermometer gave 1/2° C. The extreme wall of the cavern was completely covered by a layer of stalagmitic material, and some of the forms the substance assumed were sufficiently striking.
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