Thus we passed onward in this world of solitude—­now stopping to admire the beauties of a single stalactite—­now wondering at the magnificence of a large room—­now creeping through narrow passages, hardly wide enough to admit the body of a man,—­and now walking in superb galleries, until we came to the largest room, called WASHINGTON HALL.  This is certainly the most elegant room I ever saw.  It is about two hundred and seventy feet in length, about thirty-five in width, and between thirty and forty feet high.  The roof and sides are very beautifully adorned by the tinsels which Nature has bestowed in the greatest profusion, and which sparkle like the diamond, while surveyed by the light of torches.  The floor is flat, and smooth, and solid.  I was foremost of our little party in entering the room, and was not a little startled as I approached the centre, to see a figure, as it were, rising up before me out of the solid rock.  It was not far from seven feet high, and corresponded in every respect to the common idea of a ghost.  It was very white, and resembled a tall man clothed in a shroud.  I went up to it sideways, though I could not really expect to meet a ghost in a place like this.  On examination I found it was a very beautiful piece of the carbonate of lime, very transparent, and very much in the shape of a man.  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.