the outer side, where it stood a few feet or yards clear of the side
of the cave, the rounded ice at its foot fell off at once into a dark
chasm, a sort of smooth enticing _Bergschrund_, which we did not care
to face. Christian declared that this column was not so high as it was
a day or two before, which may go to support the theory expressed
above, or at least that part of it which depends upon the supposition
of water dropping on to the head of the column, and melting certain
portions of it.

If we were unable to take the external dimensions of this column, I
had no doubt that we should find internal investigations interesting;
so, to Christian's surprise, I began to chop a hole in it, about two
feet from the ground, and, having made an entrance sufficiently large,
proceeded to get into the cavity which presented itself. The flooring
of the dome-shaped grotto in which I found myself, was loose rock, at
a level about two feet below the surface of the ice-floor on which
Christian still stood. The dome itself was not high enough to allow me
to stand upright, and from the roof, principally from the central
part, a complex mass of delicate icicles passed down to the floor,
leaving a narrow burrowing passage round, which was itself invaded by
icicles from the lower part of the sloping roof, and by stubborn
stalagmites of ice rising from the floor.[61] The details of this
central cluster of icicles, and in fact of every portion of the
interior of the strange grotto, were exceedingly lovely, and I crushed
with much regret, on hands and knees, through fair crystal forests and
frozen dreams of beauty. In making the tour of this grotto, contorting
my body like a snake to get in and out among the ice-pillars, and do
as little damage as might be, but yet, with all my care, accompanied
by the incessant shiver and clatter of breaking and falling ice, I
came to a hole in the ground, too dark and deep for one candle to show