down and pass through the doorway, which I measured, and found it was four feet by seven, cut in the solid rock. After a minute or two we became accustomed to the sudden darkness, and could partially distinguish the objects around us. On the left side, just within the cavern, there was an immense pedestal, quite plain. We went down slipping and sliding, cautiously, one after the other, down deeper and deeper into the darkness, till we came to a column, about twelve feet in circumference, supporting a roof which appeared to me to be about twenty feet above us. The base of this column was far below the level of the door, but as it was nearly opposite to it, it caught on one side a little reflected light, and there maiden-hair grew luxuriantly, but the other sides of the pillar were only clothed with pale mosses and drooping fungus assuming grotesque forms. I removed a mass of maiden-hair to examine the nature of the native rock of which the pillar was formed. It was quite white, and crumbled easily beneath my touch.
In the mean time L. and Skander were exploring the distant recesses, and their spirit-like figures, gliding about in the darkness below, gave some idea of the depth and extent of the cavern. The floor, which was of loamy earth, continued to slope downward. There were three other massive columns; the farthest one, I should think, must be about thirty feet high. My guides warned me not to follow, for they had come to a large, though shallow, pool of water. The rain had streamed down the steep bank, and had made for itself a smooth channel to the bottom of the cavern, carpeting the way with rich soil from the surface of the terrace above. Water was trickling slowly down the walls and from the roof. Bats, disturbed by our approach, blundered against us now and then, and the damp, cold, deathlike atmosphere made us shiver. We climbed up again, and Hadj Ali helped us to reach the thistle-grown terrace in safety. We were gasping for a breath of fresh air, and rested for a minute or two blinking in the dazzling daylight and basking in the warm sunshine.
