My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

'276MY LIFEdiagonal avenues intersect the principal streets, thereare quadrangular open spaces forming gardens orsmall parks, planted with shrubs and trees, and withnumerous seats.When I left Washington for Cincinnati I broke myjourney to visit the caves at Louray, which had beendiscovered about ten years before. I and a few othervisitors walked through the best parts (which are litup with electric lights) for about two hours, through avariety of passages, galleries, and halls, some reachinga hundred feet in height, some having streams orpools of water, and some chasms of unknown depth,such as most limestone caves possess. Everywherethere are stalactites of the most varied forms, andoften of the most wonderful beauty. Usually theyform pillars as of some strange architecture, sometimesthey hang down like gigantic icicles, one of these oversixty feet long being with its dripping apex only afew inches from the floor. In some places thestalactites resemble cascades, in others organs, andseveral are like statues, and have received appropriatenames. Many of them are most curiously ribbed ;others, again, have branches growing out of them atright angles a few inches long—a most puzzlingphenomenon. There is a Moorish tent, in which finewhite drapery hangs in front of a cave, a ballroombeautifully ornamented with snow-white stalactiticcurtains, etc. Some of these, when struck, give outmusical notes, and a tune can be played on them.A photograph of the Moorish tent and the curiouspillars near it is here reproduced. The curtain is likealabaster, and when a lamp is held behind it, theeffect is most beautiful. In many places there arestalagmitic floors, beneath which is clay filled withbones of bats, etc., and at one spot human bones are