The fissure
from which the shortest of the four columns came was full of gnats, as
were also several crevices in the walls of the cave, especially in the
lowest part; and we found a number of large red-brown flies, [6]
nearly an inch long, running rapidly on the ice and stones, after the
fashion of the flies with which trout love best to be taken. The
central parts of the cave, where the roof is high, were in a state
provincially known as 'sloppy,' and drops of water fell now and then
from above, either splashing on wet stones, or hollowing out basins in
the remaining ice, or, sometimes, shrewdly detecting the most
sensitive spot in the back of the human neck. We placed one of
Casella's thermometers on a piece of wood on one of the wet stones,
clear of the ice, and it soon fell to 34 deg.. Probably the temperature
had been somewhat raised by the continued presence of three human
beings and two lighted candles in the small cavern; and, at any rate,
the cold of two degrees above freezing was something very real on a
hot summer's day, and told considerably upon my sisters, so that we
were compelled to beat a retreat,--not quite in time, for one of our
party could not effect a thaw, even by stamping about violently in the
full afternoon sun.
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