specimens of Epsom or Glauber salts.




CHAPTER IV.

The Ball-Room--Willie's Spring--Wandering Willie--Ox-Stalls--Giant's
Coffin--Acute-Angle or Great Bend--Range of Cabins--Curative Properties
of the Cave Air long known.


We are now again in the Main Cave or Grand Gallery, which continues to
increase in interest as we advance, eliciting from our party frequent
and loud exclamations of admiration and wonder. Not many steps from
the stairs leading down from the Gothic Avenue into the Main Cave, is
the Ball-Room, so called from its singular adaptedness to such a
purpose; for there is an orchestra, fifteen or eighteen feet high,
large enough to accommodate a hundred or more musicians, with a
gallery extending back to the level of the high embankment near the
Gothic Avenue; besides which, the avenue here is lofty, wide, straight
and perfectly level for several hundred feet. At the trifling expense
of a plank floor, seats and lamps, a ball-room might be had, if not
more splendid, at all events more grand and magnificent than any other
on earth. The effect of music here would be truly inspiring; but the
awful solemnity of the place may, in the opinion of many, prevent its
being used as a temple of Terpsichore. Extremes, we are told, often
meet. The same objection has been urged against the Cave's being used
for religious services. "No clergyman," remarked a distinguished
divine, "be he ever so eloquent could concentrate the attention of his