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Updated: June 5, 2025
Earth there was none, the stalactites and stalagmitic formations were of the cleanest stone, pale drab, cream, or ruddy from the solution of iron; and at last, when they must have been walking, climbing, forcing their way through narrow cracks, or crawling like lizards, for hours, the boy stooped by a little pool of crystal water in the floor, and said: "Don't you think a bit o' bread and cheese would be nice, Master Mark?"
Of the genuineness of these paintings and sculptures there can be no question, from the fact that some are partly glazed over and some half obliterated by stalagmitic deposits.
A natural path leads up over one side of the arch, and following the lead of the guide you go up above and learn that a room on the higher level extends off in that direction and gets larger and higher. The walls are stalagmitic columns in cream color and decked in places with blood-red spots or blotches of Titanic size. The ceiling you cannot see. It is too high for the lights you have to reach.
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.
The table of Serpentine is here: also the table inlaid with porphyries; one with a series of bivalve shells ; and in the centre of the room is the stalagmitic table, from the Blythe lead mine, Derbyshire, with black marble legs from Bakewell, given to the trustees of the Museum by the Duke of Rutland.
Leaving it and continuing the ascent, the top of the Throne is soon reached and is about twenty feet across; and from several points still higher, rise stalagmitic spires. "The actual height of Blondy's Throne is not known, but is probably about one hundred feet. Again look upwards for the ceiling from the dizzy height on top of the Throne; you cannot see it.
This alcove is about twenty-five feet in either direction, with a sloping floor almost covered with stalagmitic growths above the earlier deposit of sharp crystals, and many of these rise in slender columns to the glass-like ceiling, which varies in height from three to six feet and is thickly studded with small stalactites of both varieties the pointed, solid form, and those of uniform size, which are always hollow like a pipe stem.
A great number of these basins are said to have been destroyed by an ax in the hands of a poor witless creature for the gratification of a burst of temper, and a magnificent stalagmitic column, too heavy for one man to lift, lay detached and broken, in proof that his body did not share the feebleness of his mind.
The chief ornament of the Auditorium is the White Throne, a stalagmitic mass that when viewed from the stairway appears to rest solidly against the most distant wall, and looks so small an object in that vast space as to render a realization of its actual measurement impossible. The height of the Throne is sixty-five feet and the girth two hundred.
A stalagmitic crust often seals with rock the earth which accumulates in caverns, together with whatever relics of cave dwellers, either animals or men, it may contain. Can you explain why slender stalactites formed by the drip of single drops are often hollow pipes?
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