This is called WASHINGTON'S STATUE--as if Nature would do for this
hero what his delivered country has not done--rear a statue to his
memory.
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.
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