In these regions of darkness you are led by the guide until the Hall of
Beauty is lit up to your astonished gaze. Crystal flowers of the most
delicate design and exquisite workmanship hang in festoons from every
nook and corner. Sparkling incrustations that rival the beauty of Arctic
frosts and glitter in the bright light are sparkling on every side. Most
wondrous of all there are a million stalactite figures in miniature that
appear to be in a pandemonium of outlandish contortions. Maybe, who
knows, but what the goblin spirits once lived here and worked out
curious things in translucent stone, further down the black passages of
earth and caught a glimpse of our ancestors in some of the great halls
of torture way down below, and so reproduced the scene as Jack Frost has
been wont to paint the leaves of summer on our frosted window panes.
The Magi of this dark abode, the guide in wide sombrero, black eyed and
wearing a mustache fierce as a bandit of the Corsican isle, though
harmless as a Kansas Populist, beckons on and leads the way. Here the
Bridal Chamber, and there writhing reptiles, dancing devils, monkeys,
beasts, birds in every form and riotous posture. Then as the weird
wilderness is shut out in semi-darkness, one is inclined to ask of him
with lamp and sombrero, “Mister, have I got ’em, or have you?”
The light flashes on Crystal Palace, where gems and jewels bedeck the
walls, where huge chrysanthemums or chestnut burrs stand out in bold
relief in fadeless crystal flowers moulded from tinted rock, and all
seem to mutely plead for recognition as we pass. These silent beauties
hidden away under the mountain slopes, where the rays of sun can never
reach, speak with the beauty of their creation, to the soul with as
great a love and power as the violet in the sequestered glens.
It is mysterious. It is strange. It is one of those unaccountable things
in nature which no man can explain that here in the very bowels of the
earth, human scenes have been reproduced and human passions portrayed.
Here perhaps centuries before man’s eyes gazed upon the scene, we find
in moulded stone, the head of a buffalo, the skeleton of a mastodon, the
drapery of a palace, the bride at the altar, the face of sorrow, the
Nymphs of Love, War and Poetry are depicted upon these stones.
Once more the light of day, the great chasm beneath, the turquoise skies
above, and mighty plains beyond, brings one to the realm of the outer
world.
The spectral figure of an hour ago is a pleasant faced young man, who
bids you follow the winding path that leads around the mountain side
some three hundred yards and which ends at the entrance to the Grand
Caverns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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