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It is not more than ten feet high nor six in its greatest length and breadth, but every inch of its irregular surface is composed of dripstone of a bright yellowish-red and colorless crystal; and down the glittering walls trickles clear and almost ice-cold water, to the onyx floor where it is caught and held in a marvelous fluted bowl of its own manufacture.
Prince is four hundred feet below the surface. The falling water has ornamented the walls, which in this portion of the cave expose over two hundred feet of Magnesian Limestone, with unique forms of dripstone; and the steeply sloping floor has received the over-charge of calcium carbonate until it has become a shining mass of onyx, retaining pools of cold, transparent water in the depressions.
The sources of a river are usually half lost among moss and pebbles, and its first movements doubtful in direction; but, as the current gathers force, its banks are determined, and its branches are numbered. § IX. So far of the true cornice: we have still to determine the form of the dripstone. VI., and we are to consider it entirely as a protection against rain.
Dripstone covers the walls, which vary in height from one foot to twenty feet, according to the irregularities of the floor, just as the width of this one-room cave varies with the curves of the walls, which are sweeping and graceful, the average being twenty-nine feet, but is much greater at the entrance where the entire slope extends out beyond the body of the cave.
There were neither idols nor signs of paganism, except that the floor, which resembled the dripstone of Tenerife, was smoothed by the feet of the old worshippers. When steaming round the south-western point we saw at least so it was said the famous 'devil-house' which gave the islands their Portuguese name.
A huge rock directly under the dome has received the falling drip until it represents a mountain cataract. These deposits testify to the great age of the chamber they adorn, as they were necessarily not commenced until all heavy flow ceased, and in Crystal Cave the accumulation of dripstone is so slow that it is said six years' observation can detect no increase whatever.
The two flanking buttresses have been crowned at some later period with gables ending in finials, and the great gable is pierced with a Perpendicular window of three lights, which has three transoms in the head, the mullions carried up to the archivolt, and a dripstone ending in foliage. The sides of the gable here do not take an upward turn to meet the corners, and there are no flanking turrets.
The transept is well buttressed, and the gable is flanked by pinnacles, beneath which curious gargoyles project. The five graduated windows of the upper range have double shafts on each side, and the connected dripstone over the lower range ends in carved heads.
§ VII. Before passing to the dripstone, however, let us examine a little farther into the nature of the true cornice. V., perfectly protective from rain, but we can help them a little in their duty by a slight advance of their upper ledge. This, with the form b, we can best manage by cutting off the sharp upper point of its curve, which is evidently weak and useless; and we shall have the form f.
Down the wall from near the top of the dome there appears to flow a beautiful waterfall showing a variety of colors in the straight lines, as if from refraction. The fall is, of course, dripstone, and I knew we had found Niagara, although we had gone beyond the reach of the guide's voice almost at the start.
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