point is the Gulf of Doom Room, or as it is also known, the Register
Room, because here visitors usually write their names in the peculiar
dark red clay, which is moist but firm and cuts with a polish. This
room is twenty-five feet high and fifty feet wide, and looks off into
the Gulf of Doom, which seems rightly named when a rock is thrown into
it and you note the lapse of time before any sound returns; and when the
awful Gulf is made visible by lights thrown in, one involuntarily seeks
a firmer footing and clings to a projecting rock. The height of the Gulf
is ninety-five feet and the distant sound of falling water is not
reassuring. The walls are not smoothly worn away, but have the rough and
weird appearance of having been torn by a torrent in a narrow mountain
gorge, and are stained with the dark clay.

Retracing our steps a short distance, if that style of locomotion could
be called steps, we turned into Doré's Gallery, and surely that artist
was in his usual working mood when he conceived this awful method of
connecting the upper regions with the lower. Great bowlders have fallen
down without helping to fill the black holes that received them, and
into this real Inferno we proceeded to descend by narrow, ladder-like
stairs provided with a light hand rail, and trembling slightly with the
responsibility they assumed. If any one's courage trembled too, no
notice was taken of it, and a record of exploring experiences does not
necessarily include a confession of any doubts.

On all the ladders in this Gallery was a fine white fungus growth in the
form of a thick, heavy mold, that the lightest touch destroyed. In caves
where some care is taken to protect this mold, it attains a growth of
six or more feet and assumes the forms of sea-weed.

Once down the first and longest flight of stairs, without any signs of a