We cannot describe all the objects of interest at Lakon, or all the excursions which Garnier made in its neighbourhood. The geologist and botanist of the expedition adventured a visit to the Marble Mountains. With a guide and a couple of elephants, they crossed the river, plunged into the forest-depths, and found their way to the quarries, where blocks of marble are excavated for the purpose of being made into lime of a dazzling whiteness. Then they penetrated into the grottoes and caverns with which the mountains abound. As they advanced, the scenery became more and more picturesque, and more and more savage: high rugged peaks rose above the forest trees; bushes and lianas and parasitical plants decked with festoons every rocky projection; here yawned a gloomy chasm, there towered aloft a mighty and awful precipice. But the scene of scenes burst upon them after they had threaded a gloomy maze of trees and intertangled bamboos. Two immense walls of sombre rock, several hundred yards in height, enclosed a broad ravine, which, at the further extremity, opened on a bare and shining plain. On the left, the wall extended to a great distance, forming a long line, decreasing in elevation through the natural effect of the perspective. That on the right towered above a pile of enormous rocks, heaped together in the wildest confusion; it seemed to turn like the enceinte of a strong fortification, and was terminated abruptly by a vertical line, broken by numerous gaps. Between these lofty barriers lay a barren plain; afar, some miniature pools glittered with a magical effect in the “pale moonlight.” The prospect was closed in the distance by the steep declivities of lofty mountains, surrounding and shutting up, as it were, this gigantic “cirque” or amphitheatre. About three hundred yards from the entrance rose two vertical rocks, like a couple of slender spires, or rather like two enormous tapers--rose to a prodigious height, isolated, and emerging from a clump of luxuriant verdure which flourished at their feet. One of these rocks was fully nine hundred feet in elevation. The other was not so lofty, and seemed to have partially fallen, the ground being everywhere strewn with its wreck. [Illustration: NATURAL PILLAR IN THE MOUNTAINS OF LAKON.] From this remarkable spectacle the French _savants_ proceeded to inspect a superb grotto excavated in the great wall of cliff, near the two pillar-like masses. By climbing some rocks they obtained an entry into it, and found it to form a spacious hall, varying from forty to eighty feet in height, of great depth, with a rounded, vaulted roof. The ground was thick with stalagmites; while stalactites of the most various shapes depended from the vault, and glittered, like so many mirrors, in the light of torches. * * * * * ~PALM-WINE.~ ~HOW THE WINE IS COLLECTED.~