and the other 15 feet high; and when we tied a candle to the end of an
alpenstock, and passed it into the fissures, we found that the bend of
the fissures prevented our seeing the termination of the ice. An
intermittent disturbance of the air in these fissures made the flame
flicker at intervals, though generally the candle burned steadily in
them, and we could detect no current in the cave. The fourth column was
in the low part of the cave, and we were obliged to grovel on the ice to
get its dimensions: it was 3-1/4 feet broad and 4-1/3 feet high, the
roof of the cave being only 2-3/4 feet high; and it poured out of the
vertical fissure like a smooth round fall of water, adhering lightly to
the rock at its upper end like a fungus, and growing out suddenly in its
full size. This column was dry, whereas on the others there were
abundant symptoms of moisture, as if small quantities of water were
trickling down them from their fissures, though the fissures themselves
appeared to be perfectly dry.

In one of the fissures there was a patch of what is known as
sweating-stone, [5] with globules of water oozing out, and standing
roundly upon it: the globules were not frozen. This stone was
exceedingly hard, and defied all our efforts to break off a specimen,
but at last we got two small pieces, hard and heavy, and wrapped them
in paper; ten weeks after, we found them of course quite dry, and
broke them easily, small as they were, with our fingers. The fissure
from which the shortest of the four columns came was full of gnats, as
were also several crevices in the walls of the cave, especially in the
lowest part; and we found a number of large red-brown flies, [6]
nearly an inch long, running rapidly on the ice and stones, after the
fashion of the flies with which trout love best to be taken. The
central parts of the cave, where the roof is high, were in a state
provincially known as 'sloppy,' and drops of water fell now and then