The Indian was not far wrong; we might easily have fancied ourselves in a Gothic cathedral. The wildest dreams could not picture a stranger, more original, or more fantastic style of architecture. Never did any painter of fairy scenes imagine any effects more splendid. Hundreds of columns hung down from the roof and reached the ground below. It was a really wonderful assemblage of pointed arches, lace-work, branchery, and gigantic flowers. Here and there were statues drawn by nature's hand. Lucien particularly remarked a woman covered with a long veil, and stretching out over our heads an arm which a sculptor's chisel could scarcely have rendered more life-like. There were also shapeless mouths, monstrous heads, and animals, appearing as if they had been petrified, in menacing attitudes. The illusion was rendered more or less complete according to the play of the light; and many a strange shape was but caught sight of for a moment, to as rapidly vanish. While we were moving about the cave, some long needles, hanging from the roof, touched our heads. "They are stalactites," said I to the astonished Lucien. "The rain-water, filtering through the mountain above, dissolves the calcareous matter it meets with, and produces, when it evaporates, the beautiful concretions you are now looking at." "Here is a needle coming up from the ground." "That is a stalagmite; it increases upward, and not downward like the stalactites, through which, besides, a tube passes. Look up at that beautiful needle, with a drop of water glittering at the end of it. That liquid pearl, which has already deposited on the stalactite a thin layer of lime, will fall down on the stalagmite, the top of which is rounded. After a time the two needles will join, adding another column to the grotto, which, in the course of time, will become filled up with them." "Then do stones proceed from water?" asked Lucien, with a thoughtful air. "To a certain extent," I replied; "water holds in solution calcareous matter, and, as soon as the liquid evaporates, stone is formed." "According to this," interposed l'Encuerado, "the pebbles ought to melt in the rivers." "So they do; but they do not melt so easily as some things--sugar, for instance. Don't you recollect that in the Rio Blanco the water is almost like milk, and that it leaves a whitish coating on the branches, and even on the leaves with which it comes in contact." "That's true enough," replied the Indian, who had often wondered at the petrifactions with which the banks of the White River abound. "But the water that falls down here is quite clear," urged Lucien, holding his torch close to a natural basin. "But, nevertheless, it contains salts of lime in solution, the same, in fact, as all water, particularly that from wells. And it is for this reason that housekeepers will not use it; for it will not dissolve soap, and hardens the vegetables that are cooked in it."