It would be useless to speculate as to the time the caves in this branch "took in building." It defies all calculation. Apparently the process of formation is finished. There is no dripping from the stalactites. There may be, however, in wet weather; but it seems as though the creative action had given way to the hardening process. It is suggestive of that portion of "King Solomon's Mines" in which H. R. Haggard has a clever and somewhat caustic conceit respecting stalactitic growth. On his way through the enormous cave leading to Solomon's Treasure-house, he was enchanted with the gigantic pillars, which looked like ice, and which sprang in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof. "Others again," he says, "were in process of formation. On the rock floor there was in these caves what looked exactly like a broken column in an old Grecian temple, whilst high above, depending from the roof, the point of a huge icicle could be dimly seen. And even as we gazed we could hear the process going on, for presently with a tiny splash a drop of water would fall from the far-off icicle on to the column below. On some columns the drops only fell once in two or three minutes, and in these cases it would form an interesting calculation to discover how long at that rate of dripping it would take to form a pillar, say 80 feet high by 10 in diameter. That the process was, in at least one instance, incalculably slow, the following instance will suffice to show. Cut on one of these pillars, we discovered a rude likeness of a mummy, by the head of which sat what appeared to be one of the Egyptian gods, doubtless the handiwork of some old-world labourer in the mine. This work of art was executed at about the natural height at which an idle fellow, be he Phoenician workman or British cad, is in the habit of trying to immortalise himself at the expense of Nature's masterpieces, namely, about five feet from the ground; yet at the time that we saw it, which must have been nearly 3,000 years after the date of the execution of the drawing, the column was only eight feet high, and was still in process of formation, which gives a rate of growth of a foot to a 1,000 years, or an inch and a fraction to a century." This is a very good satire upon the presumption of some modern disciples of the illustrious Cocker. A botanist may, by its concentric zones, tell the years of an exogenous plant; a bucolic sage may judge the age of horned cattle by counting their horny rings; but to tell the æons of a stalagmite is more difficult than the accurate compilation of a feminine census. Arithmetical calculations on such a subject would probably be received with as much confidence as phrenological evidence of the character and habits indicated by bumps on the head of the Great Sphinx at Ghizeh. CHAPTER XX. THE RIGHT-HAND BRANCH OF THE IMPERIAL CAVE.