if for defence, and a large circular heap of the bones of sheep and oxen, presumably the remains of many years of feasting. Captain Forbes scoffs at these bones, and suggests errant wild ponies as the depositors thereof. Olafsen had found in his earlier visit that the way was stopped, far in the recesses of the cave, by a lake of water, which filled the tunnel to a depth of 3 feet or more, lying on ice; but in 1753 there was not more than a foot of water, through which they waded without much difficulty. The air soon became exceedingly cold and thick, and for some hundreds of paces they saw no light of day, till at length they reached a welcome opening in the roof. Beyond this, the air grew colder and more thick, and the walls were found to be sheeted with ice from roof to floor, or covered with broad and connected icicles. The ground also was a mass of ice, but an inch or two of fine brown earth lay upon it, which enabled them to keep their footing. This earth appeared to have been brought down by the water which filtered through the roof. 'The most wonderful thing,' Olafsen remarks, 'that we noticed here, was, that the stalactites of ice were set with regular figures of five and seven sides, joined together, and resembling those seen on the second stomach of ruminating animals. The condensed cold of the air must have imparted these figures to the ice; they were not external (merely?), but in the ice itself, which otherwise was clear and transparent.' Henderson and his party appear to have had much more wading to do than Olafsen, walking in one instance through a long tract of water up to the knees. In the deeper recesses of the cave, apparently in the part where the earlier explorers had found the reticulated ice, they found the whole floor of the passage covered with thick ice, with so steep a dip that they sat down and slid forward by their own weight--a most undignified proceeding for a grave gentleman on a mission from the Bible Society. On holding their torches close to the floor, they saw down to a depth of 7 or 8 feet, the ice being as clear as crystal. 'The roof and sides of the cave were decorated with most superb icicles, crystallised in every possible form, many of which rivalled in minuteness the finest zeolites; while from the icy floor rose pillars of the same substance, assuming all the curious and phantastic shapes imaginable, mocking the proudest specimens of art, and counterfeiting many well-known objects of animated nature. Many of them were upwards of 4 feet high, generally sharpened at the extremity, and about 2 feet in thickness. A more brilliant scene perhaps never presented itself to the human eye, nor was it easy for us to divest ourselves of the idea that we actually beheld one of the fairy scenes depicted in Eastern fable. The light of the torches rendered it peculiarly enchanting.'