Mrauen is in Croatia, and I could see a slight difference in the people and their dress from those of Gottschee. From Mrauen, the landlord of the _Gasthaus Post_, Josef Sirar, led us to the Grosses Eisloch. This is sometimes spoken of as the Eisloch bei Skrill, but as it lies in a patch of woods below the village of Suchenreuth, the Suchenreuther Eisloch seems the correct name. At least that was what Sirar called it. It took us about an hour on foot from Mrauen to get into the woods. On the way we met two guards in uniform, carrying Männlicher carbines with fixed bayonets, and it was agreeable to feel that the strong arm of the Austrian government extended over this semi-wild land. In the woods, following Sirar's able guidance, we took a short cut--always a mistake--and were lost temporarily in a maze of bushes and brambles, in which I thought of the _kreuzotters_. After that, Sirar at first could not find the cave and had to hunt around for it, while I sat on a stone and waited impatiently. At the cave a rather steep slope of wet mud, covered with dead leaves, led down through a rock arch. Sirar had to cut several steps in the mud with his hatchet, or we should probably have sat down suddenly. The archway opened into a moderately large cavern, which was about twenty meters deep, almost round and some fifteen meters in diameter. The slope continued right across the cave, and on some parts of it were logs of wood and much débris. On the wall hung a few limestone stalactites. In the roof of the cave was a great hole, and under this was a big cone of old winter snow, which had become icy in its consistency, and on which there was much dirt and many leaves. The temperature in the cave was several degrees above freezing point, and there was no ice hanging anywhere. Sirar said that when the weather got hotter, the ice would come; but as he said also, that he had been only once before in the cave, some ten years ago, his opinion was not worth much. Both men said that the preceding winter was unusually warm. [Illustration: Fig. 6. Vertical Section of the Suchenreuther Eisloch.] THE NIXLOCH. Near Hallthurm in Bavaria, a railroad station between Reichenhall and Berchtesgaden, is a well known congeries of windholes, called the Nixloch. I visited it on Friday, July the 2d, 1897, with a railroad employee, whom I found at the peasants' _gasthaus_. The Nixloch is ten minutes distant in the forest, on the slopes of the Untersberg. It is among a mass of big limestone blocks, and close by are the remains of the walls of an old castle or fortification. The Nixloch descends from the entrance for about two meters nearly sheer, and there is just room to get through. As I sat within the outside edge of the mouth of the cave, the smoke of my cigar was slowly carried downward into it.