The railway line to the Tátra passes by the river Vág for the most part, and as every height is crowned more or less by a ruined castle, it is inevitable that the route has been compared with the Rhine valley. But there is no steamer on the Vág on account of its rapids, and those who wish to come down it will have to do so on a native-made raft, which is piloted with great skill by the peasants through seemingly impassable turmoils of water. The rail goes past Poprad, and it is near here that the first real view of the Carpathians is had, the central range, stretching grim and grey about thirty miles due east and west, and rising apparently straight from the plain. From Poprad can be visited the extraordinary Ice Cave at Dobsina, one of the wonders of the world, where skating is possible in the summer even when the air outside is at a high temperature. The perpetual chill in the cavern is accounted for by the fact that it lies at a lower level than the outer ground, and that the cold air, having once entered, hangs heavily, so when the warmer air of summer seeks to displace it, it cannot find entrance. The cave is to-day planed and smoothed and rendered easy of access in the way universally considered necessary with any work of Nature’s, until it resembles a piece of man’s architecture; nevertheless the beauty is still great, even though the gleam from the crystals is that reflected by electricity, which gives an artificial aspect to everything. The ice-columns and pendants are constantly changing in bulk and form, and the floor of the lower cave, a mass of ice, the cubic content of which can hardly be estimated, is so smooth that skating is possible at any time of the year. From Poprad again one can go to Csorba, where a small cog-wheel railway runs to a lake thus described by one who is an artist in words: “Magnificently situated among mountains and forest. Lines and patches of snow flecked the heights, and were mirrored in the still waters. Against the sunset the mountains became a warm plum colour, and, with the dark forests, plane behind plane of purply green, were all perfectly reflected in the glowing water, save where the evening breeze cut level silver lines.” Strange tales are told of some of these lakes, the depths of which are unmeasured, and the notion that they are connected with the sea by some subterranean caverns is still believed by the peasants. The hotel here belongs to the Sleeping-Car Company. The massive granite range of the High Tátra is about 18 miles long by 9 or 10 broad, its highest summits are Francis Joseph, Lomnitz, and Ice-Valley Peaks, rising to about 9000 feet.