Awe-inspiring as are the interiors of some of these caves, they are frequently most beautiful. The natural pillars are often grand in dimensions and sparkling with various hues, while stalactites and stalagmites sometimes resemble familiar objects with astonishing perfection. It is, however, not advisable to place implicit confidence in accounts of the natives, for the reality, no matter how beautiful, can hardly be equal to what the vivid imagination of the Indian has pictured. Anything bearing the least resemblance to a woman is called "a most beautiful Virgin Mary." Fantastic flutings become "an organ," and a level rock "an altar." Only once we were not disappointed, when, having been told to look for a pulpit, we found one that appeared as if man must have fashioned it, supported on a slender pyramidal base, the upper part very symmetrical, and ornamented with a perfect imitation of bunches of grapes and other fruit. As I have already said, in these caves are sheets of water, some very large, others only a few feet in circumference, fed by subterranean currents. When the water is clear and sweet, it is peopled by a kind of bagre, a blind fish called by the natives _tzau_, also a species of _Silurus_. But there are likewise medicinal and thermal waters, by bathing in which many people claim to have been cured of most painful and obstinate diseases. Strange stories are told of some of these waters. Of one it is said that those who approach it without holding their breath fall dead. People who live near the place swear it is so, and say the water appears to boil on such occasions. From the thermal waters, in some cases 100 feet below the soil, and without means of access except by buckets let down through an opening in the rock, warm vapors issue at early morn, but when the sun is high the water is cool and pleasant to drink. The name _senote_ is given to all these deposits of water, also to some immense natural circular wells from 50 to 300 feet in diameter. The walls are more or less perpendicular, generally covered with tropical vegetation. The current in some is swift, but no inlets or outlets are visible. The water is deliciously pure and sweet, much better than that of wells opened by man in the same country. These enormous deposits generally have a rugged path, sometimes very steep, leading to the water's edge, but daring natives throw themselves from the brink, afterward ascending by stout roots that hang like ropes down the walls, the trees above sucking through these roots the life-sustaining fluid more than a hundred feet below.