While we were in the cave, we noticed that the surfaces of the columns
were covered by very irregular lines, marked somewhat deeply in the
ice, and dividing the surface into areas of all shapes, a sort of
network, with meshes of many different shapes and sizes. These areas
were smaller towards the edges of the columns; the lines containing
them were not, as a rule, straight lines, and almost baffled our
efforts to count them, but, to the best of my belief, there were
meshes with three, four, and up to eight sides. The column which
stood clear of the rock was composed of very limpid ice, without
admixture of air; but the cascades were interpenetrated by veins of
looser white ice, and, where the white ice came, the surface lines
seemed to disappear. As we sat on the grass outside, arranging our
properties for departure, my attention was arrested by the columnar
appearance of the fractured edge of the block of ice which we had used
at luncheon. It was about 5 inches thick, and had formed part of a
stalagmite whose horizontal section, like that of the free column,
would be an ellipse of considerable eccentricity; and, on examination,
it turned out that the surface areas, which varied in size from a
large thumb-nail to something very small, were the ends of prisms
reaching through to the other side of the piece of ice, at any rate in
the thinner parts, and presenting there similar faces.
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