The distance from the Crystal Palace to the Jewel Casket is about 15 yards north-west, through a hall about 25 feet high and about 15 feet wide. The Casket itself is a horizontal fissure in the rocks, about 8 feet by 12, filled with brilliants of various hues. Its splendour is enchanting. Overhanging stalactites guard the Casket, and form as it were bars of alabaster, opal and crystal, and through the spaces may be seen many different varieties of crystallization. The floor is carpeted with jewels, set off with sparkling masses like frozen snow. Some of the gems are white like diamonds, some coloured like cairngorms, and other varieties of rock crystal of even more delicate tints, and numbers of them are clear and translucent. Some of the ornamentation is of a rich brown. The impression produced is that nothing could possibly be more brilliant and entrancing than this rich casket; and yet, remembering how many times previously he has come to the same conclusion and subsequently found he had miscalculated the magnificence still in reserve, the visitor hesitates to accept the Jewel Casket as the _ne plus ultra_ of cave magnificence. Then there is the Bridal Veil, about 10 feet by 2 feet--a wonderful piece of delicate tracery imitating fine lace--not _écru_, but white as the fairest emblem of a blameless life. Here are numerous terraces in deep brown and fawn colour covered with spangles which glitter like broken-up moonbeams on the wavelets of a summer sea or the phosphorescence which, in the wake of a ship, mocks the stars. The Flowering Column comes next--a huge mass of formation 25 feet high, branching off into all sorts of shapes graceful and grotesque. It is about eight feet wide in the centre, of a rich brown colour shading off to a brighter and lighter hue. This pillar is covered with remarkable little figures like flowers natural and fanciful, and near to it is a series of imitation cascades in regular sequence which simulate so much natural force that they might be taken as an illustration in lime of "how the waters come down at Lodore." These cataracts or waterfalls are now for the most part dry; but at one time the supply of liquid or semi-liquid limestone, of which they are formed, must have been very abundant. CHAPTER XXVII. HOW CAVES ARE MADE--THE WORK OF AGES.