Here an accident happened which might have been serious. One of our party had purposely extinguished his light, lest we should not have enough to last. My companion accidentally put out his light, and in sport came and blew out mine. We were now about sixteen hundred feet from daylight, with but one feeble light, which the falling water might in a moment have extinguished. Add to this, that the person who held this light was at some distance viewing some falling water. "Conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant." We, however, once more lighted our torches; but, had we not been able to do so, we might, at our leisure, have contemplated the gloominess of the cavern, for no one would have come to us till the next day. In one room we found an excellent spring of water, which boiled up as if to slake our thirst, then sunk into the mountain, and was seen no more. In another room was a noble pillar, called the TOWER OF BABEL. It is composed entirely of stalactites of lime, or, as the appearance would seem to suggest, of petrified water. It is about thirty feet in diameter, and a little more than ninety feet in circumference, and not far from thirty feet high. There are probably millions of stalactites in this one pillar. Thus we wandered on in this world within a world, till we had visited twelve very beautiful rooms, and as many creeping places, and had now arrived at the end,--a distance from our entrance of between twenty-four and twenty-five hundred feet; or, what is about its equal, half a mile from the mouth. We here found ourselves exceedingly fatigued; but our torches forbade us to tarry, and we once more turned our lingering steps towards the common world. When we arrived again at Washington Hall, one of our company three times discharged a pistol, whose report was truly deafening; and as the sound reverberated and echoed through one room after another till it died away in distance, it seemed like the moanings of spirits. We continued our wandering steps till we arrived once more at daylight, having been nearly three hours in the cavern. We were much fatigued, covered with dirt, and in a cold sweat; yet we regretted to leave it. From the farther end of the cave I gathered some handsome stalactites, which I put into my portmanteau, and preserved as mementos of that day's visit.