Atlas Page 26
By Francis Meyers

IN the description of the towns lying along the western line, a passing mention was made of the Jenolan Caves, and an intimation was given that they would be separately described. They deserve this distinction, as being not only the most picturesque feature in the western district, but one of the great sights of New South Wales.

They are not the only limestone caves in the colony, as there are others at Wambeyan, Yarrangobilly, Wellington and Boree. All of these are not only remarkable for natural beauty but are highly interesting to the geologist for their fossil remains. The Jenolan Caves, however, are the most remarkable, the best explored, and the most accessible. Formerly, though erroneously, they were known as the Fish River Caves, but though close to the dividing water-shed of that river, they are not in it. They lie in a valley which drains into the Cox, and so into the Nepean and Hawkesbury.

Jenolan lies in a wide bend of the Great Western Railway, and so may be reached from several points from the line. It is actually nearest to Katoomba, but the track is over very rough bush country. A coach road from Mount Victoria leads to the top of the hill looking down into the valley. There are tracks also from Hartley and Rydal, but the usual travellers’ route is from Tarana through Oberon.

The caves are in a limestone belt from two to four hundred yards wide an old coral reef. This belt runs right across the valley, but the creeks, instead of cutting through it, worked subterranean channels, and so carved out the tunnels and caves. The limestone is of palaeozoic siluro-Devonian age, and the erosion of the present valleys took place chiefly during the pliocene tertiary epoch.

As the visitor approaches the valley by any of the routes, he sees a great green mountain, covered at its base with grass, ferns and flowering shrubs, lightly timbered on its crown, and generally free from protruding rocks. It is in no sense a rugged mountain, and seems set as in special contrast with the boulder-strewn slopes, the sheer crag faces, the bastions, ramparts and pinnacles, immediately around and below. Descending, all is stern and wild. Beauty of blossom and foliage vary the scene, but fail to clothe it. Any patch of soil there may be on the rocks bears mountain violets, buttercups —quaint golden knobs —and little star-shaped daisies. In the crannies many varieties of fern are rooted, and where trees appear they are gnarled and knotted gums; or by the water’s edge the dismal shea-oaks —the Australian whisper trees, whose presence and voice add a sentiment of weirdness to the rugged grandeur of the mountain landscape.

The caves explored are situated in a saddle between the two hills, from whose summits descend the Mount Victoria and Tarana roads. Limestone is seen on the surface continuously for a distance of about five miles, but the underlying stratum has been proved by occasional outcrops for thirty miles, and is supposed to stretch far underground and appear again in the quarries at Marulan, on the Great Southern Railway line. There are explored, and accessible to tourists, five great caves —the "Imperial"(with two branches), the "Cathedral," the "Nettle," the "Arch" and the "Elder." These subterranean halls are reached from two immense arches or grottoes piercing the mountain saddle.

The first of these, the "Grand Arch," opens on the western side into the ravine where the cave house and buildings are, and on the east into the gorge of the Mackewan Creek, the subterranean river of the caves. This has been hollowed out beneath gigantic fortress-like masses of rock. On the western side the entrance is comparatively low, roughly resembling a Moorish arch, and is fifty feet wide at the base and about thirty feet high. Excepting a narrow, irregular space, through which the foliage of the gully beyond is seen, the inside is blocked by huge masses of fallen rock, past which a channel about fourteen feet in width gives access to the huge-domed interior, and opens out the eastern entrance which appears, from within an irregular triangle, with sides of about one hundred and twenty feet in length and a base of not less than two hundred feet. These sides are slightly arched —the angle at the crown appears almost perfect. The length across is four hundred and sixty feet, the top of the dome is seventy feet from the floor, the extreme width at the centre is two hundred feet. All along the southern side is an immense pile of fallen rocks; on the right is one huge mass forty feet in length, twenty in height, and averaging twenty in thickness, a portion of the outer edge of its summit distantly resembling a pulpit rail, hence probably its name, the "Pulpit." Immediately behind the "Pulpit" is the "Organ" a shallow cavity in the wall of the cavern, where stalactites and stalagmites have met and formed a front resembling the pipes of an organ. Farther round are rock faces from which the masses on the floor would seem to have been rent away by direct cleavage —not water-torn, but singularly weather-stained. And the roof is a marvel! All over it, all over the inner arch of such a dome as would cap St. Peter’s, immense masses of rock seem literally to hang.

They resemble a drooping skirt of gigantic garments, fossilised, turned into a dull grey stone, which, impregnated with iron and copper, have assumed mysterious tints and blends of dark red and green. Wherever an open space is left, it is quaintly mottled with mildew, and over all there is gloom, perpetual shadow, mystery, a sentiment of the nether world. It is the hall of Eblis, most truly, and just round the corner is the "Devil’s Coach-house." Upon the eastern edge, within the arch a flight of wooden steps leads to a vault-like entrance guarded by an iron gate. This gate the guide opens, and following him with candies lighted, visitors leave daylight and the outer world, and enter the realm of the gnomes. It is the double-branched "Imperial Cave." The first marvel discovered is a chamber, the "Woolshed," some twenty feet broad and of a noble height, where particles of limestone, carried down by dripping water, have been deposited in shapes resembling fleeces —tiny fleeces shorn from the lambs of fairy flocks, and huge fleeces ample to swathe the limbs of Hercules, hung apparently on benches drooping from ledges, or spread upon the floor, looking, in the flickering light of the candles, as soft as newly-shorn wool. The "Vestry" follows the "Woolshed," and then, in what may be termed an alcove of the cave, the "Architect’s Studio." This is a large chamber whose walls are a dull grey, and about whose floor are many columns, indeed a double chamber, as is presently seen, for through a noble Gothic arch faint white lights gleam, which, in the glow of the magnesium wire, declare themselves as clustered stalagmites of infinitely varied form —an experiment, it might well be supposed, of some architect of the gnome world, and an effort which resulted in the perfections to be discovered later on. A hundred yards in from this studio, the narrow channel leads by walls, at times, dripping wet and sparkling in every ray of light —at others, dull, cold, grey and vault —like; and occasionally strewing the floor are bones rapidly changing into beautiful specimens. A little farther in there is the "Margaretta Cave," with innumerable columns and curtains of marble and alabaster. "Helen’s Cave" is similarly glorified, and sanctified moreover by the presence of a "Madonna" —not a perfect Madonna, or one carved by human hands, but a stalagmite left solitary —a column of dull white marble, weatherworn into a shape resembling the mother and child; at times, no matter how dim be the light, the mother seems to wear a sun bonnet. Still onward runs the narrow way, and soon the "Lucinda" is found, of which it may be well to speak at length, in order to explain some terms which must be frequently used in future description. The "Lucinda Cave" is rich in "shawls"; they hang from the roof and drape the ‘walls, and enfold the alabaster columns of the great central formation, which would make the, noblest, most beautiful reredos that ever adorned cathedral sanctuary. But these "shawls" are not of the texture of any earthly loom. They are of purest marble and alabaster, tinted with solutions of the native ores of the hills. They droop from the rocks (being the results of slowly dripping water they are never seen to project) from three inches to six feet in length, and from an eighth to a half an inch in thickness. If the light from the magnesium lamp be thrown behind them they are seen to be semi-transparent, to be of varied and delicate tints, of such whites and pinks as were seen in the lost terraces of New Zealand —such pale yellow, such apricot tones as are seldom seen elsewhere in the world; and across them run bands of such deep orange, red and brown as Persian dyers love. These clothe the chamber of the "Lucinda," whose main object resembles a mighty altar piece —snowy, semi-transparent columns rising from rich grey bases of a substance resembling dull marble; stalactites, drooping from a continuous mass of glistening white, approaching them; pendants innumerable of many delicate tints; the dull and distant grey roof arched above, and all the floor bestrewn with crystals.

Such is the utterly inadequate and certainly unexaggerated description of one grotto of the caves —one of a hundred already explored, one of thousands lying away east and west beneath the grim outer garments of the far-extending hills.

Beyond it lies the "Jewel Casket," a cavern of crystals and beautiful forms of Pinnacle, spire and pendant in miniature; and in the extremity, at the end of a mile of wonderland, is "Katie’s Bower," specially rich in "shawls" and most delicate furnishings. It is a half-day’s work to explore it, and no day of all the year could be better filled than by traversing the right-hand branch which completes the "Imperial Cave." The guides (chief and master of whom is Jeremiah Wilson, explorer and opener up of all these caves) regard the right-hand branch of the "Imperial" as the richest treasure-house of all their realm; and it is indeed a scene, or a continuance of scenes, of bewildering beauty —a succession of treasure stores, of palaces, of fairy playgrounds, of most beautiful and sacred grottoes, of triumphs and trophies of fairy work, hung upon the walls or buried in little chambers of the rocks; of vast distances and lofty-domed retreats, where stand solitary snow-white columns, as if the builders and furnishers of the place had turned themselves to stone, that so they ,might dwell with and watch over their treasures for ever. Hard by the entrance to this cave, and forty feet below it; floor, flows the hidden river, only to be reached by the somewhat perilous descent of an iron ladder; a little farther on is the "Crystal Rock." then another shawl cave, rich with an infinite variety of these beautiful creations. The "Confectioner’s Shop," is a lengthy cavern, where stalactite and stalagmite, and encrustation on the walls, and crystallisation on the floor, seem the realisations of all those ideas which confectioners strive to work out. This is indeed a homely illustration, and the "cates and comfits" of fairyland must be imagined if the charm of the place is in any degree to be understood. Next, surrounded by shadowy walls —where projecting rock masses seem to take shape as armed knights; where fragments above appear as eagles with spread wings, as Titanic hands lifted in menace or in warning, as veiled figures, as cloaked arms pointing inward —the beautiful solitary stalagmite is reached which bears the name of "Lot’s Wife," a lonely column, semi-transparent, whiter than any marble, upon a, dark brown floor. The "Crystal Cities," down the next decline, would take many pages to describe, for how in a few words can we set forth the beauties of a space fifty yards in length and an average of four in breadth, crowded with results of crystallisation and metallic colouring, infinite as the varied forms of water, from the filmiest summer cloud or the thinnest steam, to solid arctic ice? More spires here than Merlin gave to Camelot, more icicles than ever hung from any palace of the Neva; and on the floor are terraced gardens of jewels, and in broad parterres, ranks of tiny stalagmites, like armies of fairy fighting men.

What a contrast to pass from them all, and, set upon a hill in a high-arched cavern beyond, to see another solitary white column, bearing the name of "Lot," looking back at his lost wife over all these treasures! A remark made here by one of Lot’s wife’s sex is not unworthy of record —"I am glad something has been done to him at last." In a little cavern near by are a strange collection of crystals flashing like gems in the rays of the lamp —they are called the "Queen’s Jewels." Down the main avenue are "Selina’s Cave" and the "Josephine Grotto " —grand with huge columns, festooned with "shawls," "curtains," and many-formed and many-tinted marble draperies, stalactites, crystal-clear, snowy-white, and of all the shades between transparent apricot and deep-toned terra cotta; after which the "Mystery," a cavern set high in the wall, with spikes and spicules, with tiny columns and quaint figures in infinite variety —cast, spun, woven, hewn from plastic crystal and alabaster. Hardly is it passed when there come dazzling flashes from the "Diamond Wall," and beyond is seen the mystic "Bridal Veil," bearing an actual resemblance to a fall of lace sprinkled with tiny jewels. It is solid marble —marble that has actually flowed out of the heart of the hills —more handiwork of the gnomes, those marvellous earth forces. How masterfully yet how imperceptibly they toil! The "Crystal Palace" and the "Garden Palace" are rich with radiant gems, with spires and pendants of all the hues with which cave experience makes us familiar, and the "Gem of the West" is held by the custodian to be also the gem of the caves. This marvellous formation hangs somewhat as an orchid on a garden wall. It might well be imagined to have grown as a flower. A broad shell-like back, shaped somewhat as the body of a staghorn fern, projects about three feet, and terminates on its outer edge in a. perfect semi-circle of transparent fringe. From its base droop crystal pendants transparent as ice, brilliant as diamonds, fine as threads of spun glass —some, three feet in length and stout as the largest icicles, others, three inches and as fine as needles.

There was never a chandelier in any palace of the world to compare with it, never ornament or treasure manufactured by man’s hand that would not seem insignificant when placed beside it. It is beyond doubt a gem of the whole world —one of the treasures which a jealous Nature very rarely yields to mortal eyes. The "Fairy’s Retreat" beyond, a cavern of crystals, a mile and a half from the entrance, is accepted for the present as the’ termination of this remarkable cave. Returning by way of the long wooden stairs, and stepping out from the arch, the sweetness and light of the outer world are felt in the odour of countless snow-white blooms hanging in festoons from the verdant greenery of the creek. They completely cover the heads of some of the tallest trees and droop in long tendrils to the rich and varied fern growth about the edge of the rapidly-flowing water; for the creek springs to light again here from its hidden currents in the caves, and brawls along a merry half-mile to a bare rock-face fifteen feet in height. There, of course, is the fall —the gathered waters leap into a broad, deep pool below, making music which fills all the air around. Looking upward from the bed of the creek through the roughly-piled rocks and the bright and varied foliage, a half of the "Carlotta Arch" is seen, and beyond, a flight of concrete steps on the high ground almost beneath the arch. This is the entrance to the "Nettle Cave," so called because of the abundance of nettles which in the old days grew about its entrance. It is a sad misnomer. "New Luxor," "Karnac," the "Basilica," the "Hall of the Kings," "Asgard," or the "Tombs of the Giants," would be more fitting, for all within is vast and grand, and is as magnificent a contrast to the sparkling beauties of the "Imperial" as a forest oak to a garden hyacinth. The "Nettle Caves" connect with the arch; they may be viewed and described as one. All their characteristics are the same; vastness, grandeur, colossal proportions everywhere —huge caverns upheld by gigantic columns, great shapes recumbent as of dead giants at rest, vaulted roofs a hundred feet aloft, and walls crowded with figures in which countless statuesque shapes may be seen of a soft, pure gray, like the interior of a medieval cathedral, or else green-stained through saturation with coppery solutions. On entering the "Nettle Cave" the first group met with is the "Company of the Ancients" —five huge stalagmites worn and fretted away to poor stumps of their former magnificence, but still massive and picturesque. Only one, a little apart, stands erect and. complete, fourteen feet in height and of proportionate bulk, somewhat kingly in attitude. A long hall is seen beyond, the "Ancient," with one perfect column, where stalactite and stalagmite have met, reaching from roof to floor. Once there were five, but an abominable vandalism, in the days when the caves had no secure guard, broke down and destroyed four. One remains central in this long hall or corridor, whose smooth floor, thirty yards in length and ten in width, leads to a grotto named the "Sculptor’s Studio," where, it might well be imagined, spirits who had wrought in building or decorating the dead cities of the old world had suddenly ceased from their earlier toil, for these caverns and columns are older by untold ages than any cities the old world knew.

There are stalactites, marked by the keeper of the caves, which have grown but three-quarters of an inch in eighteen years, and a learned professor, taking only a moderate-sized pendant and calculating from this basis, estimated that its growth must have occupied a period of two hundred and sixty-nine thousand years —so long has Nature been labouring in preparing this palace for our delight. It must not be supposed, however, that any such limit can be fixed to the term of the formation of the caves. When the geologist looks closely into the limestone of which they are formed he discovers it to consist almost entirely of corals and shells, and thus lie infers that the parent material of all the rock at one time lived and grew in the warm ocean. The stillness of the central sea was once over all this caverned space, the coral reef grew in the darkness of the unfathomed depths, and in the fulness of time was upheaved by the central forces of the world, three thousand feet above the sea level. And through what enormous periods wrought by air and water, scooping out the great gorges, hollowing out the great caves! Two hundred and sixty-nine thousand years represents but a moiety of the time occupied in their decoration, the building and the preparation of the material were all before. Well says the guide, pointing to a huge projection on the tipper wall of the "Devils Coach-house" (seen from the "Arch Cave"), whose crown is shaped as the head of an ancient, rugged and vast with Homer-like locks curling far down. "He was old there, before Adam was made." A great cavern, with a floor space sixty feet by forty in the "Arch Cave," bears the name of "The Ball-room," and around its walls are many very stately columns and stalactites of a perfect terra-cotta tint, all rich and chaste, and free from the slightest spark. The only trace of a crystal or transparent formation is in some half-exposed masses, knee and elbow shaped, a section of a trunk at times protruding, ringed as the back of a lobster, and in colour a pale malachite. They resemble the bodies of some monsters of an old world rising slowly from their burial places. A sense of awe mingles with wonder as their shapes are fancied out, and a shudder of horror is hardly resisted as the warm human hand. rests upon their clammy surface.

Near to them is a cluster of huge many-domed formations, named "The Willows," bearing a striking resemblance to willow-trees bowed down with snow —snow which in some mysterious manner has been transmuted into stone, whose surface has by some subsequent process of Nature been painted green, bright almost as the leaves of willow-trees. Far above "The Willows " is the pear-shaped opening on the roof of the "Devil’s Coach-house"; about its sides are some few traces of the outer word —fern leaves and tendrils of a delicate green. They break the spell of the enchantment bred by the spirit of the inner recesses. Turn again from the subdued daylight, look for a moment at the two grotesque masses which are supposed to resemble fighting cocks. Look attentively, and one becomes an eagle, with bent beak and talons rooted in its prey, suggestive of the Promethean legend.

With lighted candles the guide leads past pillar, pinnacle and arch, by a narrow passage into a cavern where great clubs of rock hang from the roof. Let the lights be extinguished and then in a darkness that may be felt, wait and listen! Suddenly, startlingly close to the ear, comes the boom of a deep-toned bell. Another and another, with higher, clearer tones —an actual chimes rung. It strikes through the ear to the deepest wonder chambers of the mind. It seems as if in the intense darkness the spirits of the caves were tolling a knell for the mighty dead sepulchred around and below. But when lights are rekindled, the sound is discovered to proceed from the clubs or mace-like stalactites, whose lower extremities are hollow, and when struck by a piece of soft rock produce this peculiar effect. The largest and deepest toned sends a boom along the corridor like the sound of the great bell of an English minster, heard across miles of woodland.

Let the "Belfry" ring farewell to the "Arch Cave," and pass out beneath the mighty arch, where a great bough of a beautiful vine, white as jasmine and densely-flowered as banksia rose, swings by the cliff wall almost to the iron grating of the entrance; climb then to the upper entrance, and look through the long valley of Mackewan Creek, with its waterfalls singing far below. From this point the valley resembles a picture set in the frame of the arch. The walls are eighty feet in height, the breadth of the flat rock which joins them is thirty feet, and all along its edge droop stalactites black against the blue sky. It is a very fitting entrance to such caves as are found below —a portal worthy of the sepulchres of the gods.

Down flight after flight of damp steps winds the path, by dark dank walls, over grave-like floor spaces, by rocks of mountainous bulk piled in weird confusion, an occasional bat flitting across the gloom and vanishing into the darkness far overhead. After an eerie ten minutes of journeying, the magnesium wire is lit, and then the great nave of the "Cathedral " is fully disclosed. Its dome towers aloft three hundred feet. Its greatest diameter is not less than two hundred. Its colours, as shown by the light, are all cold and gloomy, an occasional stalactite formation of a warmer grey affording but scant relief. Still down goes the path, but not to a succession of glooms and dolours. A "shawl" cave is presently reached, but not of the proportions of those seen in the "Imperial." The shawls here trail from great walls, droop from the front of rocks like precipice edges, hang screen-like upon dark spaces, so perfect in every fold, that a strange desire is felt to stretch a hand and draw them aside. One special curtain in this chamber should bear the name of "The Marble Screen." It hangs upon the left-hand wall, and is seen across a chasm about thirty feet wide. It is about eight feet in length by ten in breadth, and appears in the lamp-light to drape so exactly like long folds of white samite, that if the least breath of wind should blow one might expect to see a ripple of motion pass from fold to fold. It is a screen that has never been withdrawn. Nature wove and hung it there, and still labours towards its perfection. When this cave of marble drapery is left in darkness, another great space opens which is called "The Exhibition" —a vast hall or vault of majestic desolation. The most prominent object is "The Broken Column." A marble base, a marble cornice and capital above, enriched with those decorations which are of the order of Nature; a shaft rising, a shaft descending —so Nature builds here, mocking all the art of man; but the two will never meet, for on some great day of a far away time the foundation of the stalagmite slipped forward just so much as to render completion for ever impossible. One might imagine that day saw a terrible havoc in these vaults, that some spirits had set about here to reproduce the glories of another world, that they had made marvellous progress with their work, but were suddenly arrested, condemned, overthrown; all their completed work wrecked —all their plans confounded. For it is but the beauty of magnificent incompleteness which is seen in the marvellous formation right opposite to "The Broken Column." Marble columns and walls seem to have been begun with intent to support a canopy, the first lines of whose decoration had been carefully inwrought; a few stalactites had been drooped as mortals hang tapestry, and for a hundred feet in length the square front of the canopy of a great throne had been planned and left. The wreck, the chaos, the fragments of the mighty building are marvellously beautiful, but there is a sentiment of death, of stoppage, of obstruction, in them all —a false sentiment, for still the work proceeds, still stalactite and stalagmite descend and arise, still the marvellous textures of the "shawls" extend, the screens are perfected, and walls and domes and inner recesses clothed with an ever-increasing beauty.

Downward from "The Exhibition," past tinted rocks reaching from ceiling to floor like cataracts that tumbling down, in colour as the mane of a chestnut steed, had been turned to stone and crystallised and sprinkled with powdered diamonds; by monstrous columns, grotesque and grand and beautiful; past little grottoes, each one a treasure house, the path still leads, and before making the ascent which leads to the "Music Hall" and "Lurline’s Grotto," it is well to pause and look aloft and realise the magnitude of the tremendous dip of roof, which, smooth and solid, stretches like the segment of a little world high overhead. The portion seen by the rays of the lamp cannot be less than eight hundred feet in measurement, and so slight is the curve, that it does not appear to contain more than three or four degrees of circumference. It slants downward as the smooth face of a tremendous cloud bank, flattened, yet driven by a growing wind. It is such a vault as might well be imagined beneath the greatest pyramid. But few visitors regard the roof or walls when the light begins to play about the glories of "Lurline’s Grotto," the completed shrine where every pillar and column and frieze and cornice seem complete, where such work has been accomplished as was never seen about the kingliest tomb or the lordliest shrine of the world. It is as though alabaster and marble, and jacinth and, chrysolite had been freely used. Everything is suffused with lovely semi-transparent colour. The iron and the copper are so intermixed with the crystal that the faintest and yet most perfect tints are produced no vein, or stain, or blot on them all. "The Music Gallery" is near to " Lurline’s Grotto," another group of resonant stalactites, smaller than those of the "Belfry," and rather shrill than sweet or deep in tone. When these are passed a cavern yawns, across which an iron bridge has been swung near to the inner wall. Down in the depths the "Hidden River" flows; a stone flung over the rail rebounds from rock to rock, and finally splashes in the still, clear waters. Beyond the bridge, in still deeper recesses of the cave, Nature has wrought fantastically; there is a heap of "potatoes " marble fragments rounded and encrusted with some brown substance like the outer skin of potatoes newly dug from the soil. Near by are "snowballs" and "cauliflowers," almost perfect images of these familiar shapes hanging to walls and ceilings, shown upon the floor, and last (so far as at present explored) in a little grotto beyond a narrow passage, a single massive stalagmite rises before a cranny in the rock-face through which is no possibility of entry, sparkling with an opal-like fire wherever touched by a moving light. This is called the end of the cave. Having seen it, steps are retraced until an iron ladder is reached, which gives access by a short cut to the upper vaults of the "Cathedral," and thence by long flights of stone steps to the outer air. An oppressive burden of memories is gathered by a single visit to this great cave —awful depth of gloom, vastness, incompleteness, chaos, scraps of beauty perfected amongst mountains of stupendous ruins. To write or to paint its full description would be as impossible as to tell the full tale of the pathos, the agony, the heroism, the martyrdom of the longest gallery of the catacombs of Rome. The "Elder Cave" so called from a great and beautiful elder tree overshadowing its well-like mouth, lies farthest north of all the caves. Its interior is a terrible chaos of tumbled rocks and narrow, tortuous passages, with only a few occasional patches of rare and delicate beauty. In its farthest and latest discovered chamber are some coral formations, springing branch-like from floor and walls. If found alone they would well repay a visit, but at Jenolan they are fairly outshone by the superior beauties immediately around. Last to be seen is the "Devil’s Coach-house," another stupendous cavern cut beneath the limestone bar, by the rush and ripple of the water of the Mackewan Creek. It is two hundred and seventy-five feet from roof to floor, five hundred feet from northern to southern entrance, four hundred feet in extreme, breadth. A pear-shaped opening high in the roof admits daylight enough to shew marvels and mysteries on the walls and the pendants on the roof, grotesquely shaped and stained, while in the full light that streams through the arched openings huge masses of marble are seen heaped on the floor, black as the crags of Sinai, with boulders of a dull blue or slate colour strewn about their bases. Some outer galleries of the arch and "Nettle Caves," seen from the northern entrance high up, are to the right. It is a vast, a weird, an awful place, by no means ill-named by its early explorers; such a place Herne the Hunter, or Lutzow the Jager of the German woods, would choose to tether his fire-fed steeds. It completes the circuit of the caves as at present opened; is as appropriate a gate of departure as the "Grand Arch " is of entrance; the outer door, if so the visitor choose, of such a temple of Nature as was never opened to mortal eyes in the world before, "And as yet," says the quaint and worthy keeper and explorer, we are but at the beginning. By that rock (a half-mile away) is another cave entrance, by that tree (high up on the cliff-side) is another into which we have but peered. In the ‘Mammoth,’ two miles away, I was lowered down two hundred feet into a hollow vault where the biggest church of Sydney might have swung without touching any wall."