Retracing our course past the rock portal to the entrance pit, we descended on the long staircase for some eighty steps more, the amount of ice on the rocks steadily increasing. In places, frost crystals had formed in small quantities on the roof and walls. At the bottom of the pit, another lateral gallery, directly under the upper gallery, opened to the right. Entering this, we passed over broken limestone débris, which seemed to overlie a mass of ice. Limestone stalactites were noticeable all through this lower cavern, and frost and icicles had sometimes formed over them, in which case the ice stalactite assumed the form of the limestone stalactite. Advancing a few meters, we went by, on our right hand, an ice pyramid of a couple of meters in height. Just beyond this, the cave turned to the left like the upper cave, and we descended to a level floor of transparent ice, into which we could see some distance. At this spot, numerous icicles, generally of inconsiderable size, hung from the roof and on the sides of the cavern. At the further end of this ice floor or ice lake we reached an ice slope, the _Eiswand_, which flowed to the ice floor from the upper cave in several waves. It was some six meters wide and twenty-five meters long; and it was not steep, perhaps fifteen degrees in the steepest portions. On the slope some old, nearly obliterated steps were visible, and at these Misura proceeded to cut, and with torch in one hand and axe in the other, gradually worked his way up, until he once more reached the level spot whence we had looked down the ice slope. Here he stood waving his torch, a proceeding indeed he did constantly throughout the trip, for he seemed exceedingly proud of the beauties of his cavern. This waving of torches, however, is exceedingly foolish, as their smoke quickly blackens stalactite, and in fact nothing but candles and magnesium wire should be carried for lighting purposes underground. The ice of the ice slope was hard, gray and opaque, quite different from that of the ice lake. The ice floor is formed of new ice, which is gradually refilling the place from which Misura said the ice for Buda-Pest was taken out twenty-five years ago. To prove this assertion, he called my attention to the side of the lake directly opposite the ice slope. At that spot, under the limestone rubbish over which we came, there was an outcrop of perpendicular opaque ice about a meter high. Misura said that the workmen began to cut at the ice slope and that they dug out a couple of meters in depth from the ice lake, until they had cut back to where the vertical outcrop was standing.