The roof of the entrance is at first a mere shell, formed by the thin crust of rock on which the surface-earth and trees rest high overhead; but this rapidly becomes thicker, as shown in the section of the cave, and thus a sort of outer cave is formed, the real portal of the glaciere being reached about 60 feet above the bottom of the slope.  This outer cave presents a curious appearance, from the distinctness with which the several strata of the limestone are marked, the lower strata weathered and rounded off like the seats of an amphitheatre of the giants, and all, up to the shell-like roof, arranged in horizontal semicircles of various graduated sizes, showing their concavity; while at the bottom of the whole is seen a patch of darkness, with two masses of ice in its centre, looming out like grey ghosts at midnight.  This darkness is of course the inner cave, the entrance to which, though it seems so small from above, is 78 feet broad.

The glaciere itself may be said to commence as soon as this entrance, or perpendicular portal, is passed, and thus includes 60 feet of the long slope of ice, from the foot of which to the farther end of the cave is 145 feet, the greatest breadth of the cave being 148 feet.  Immediately below the portal I found a piece of the trunk of a large column of ice, 7 feet long and 12 feet in girth, its fractured ends giving the idea of the interior of a quickly-grown tree, in consequence of the concentric arrangement of convergent prisms described in the account of the Glaciere of S. Georges.  The wife of the farmer told me afterwards that there had been two glorious columns at this portal, which the recent rains had swept away.  Excepting a short space at the foot of the slope, and another towards the farther end of the cave, the floor was covered with ice, in some parts from 3 to 4 feet thick:  of this a considerable area had been removed to a depth of 2 1/2 or 3 feet, leaving a pond of water a foot deep, with bottom and banks of ice.  The rock which composes the true floor rises at the farthest end of the cave, and the roof is so arranged that a sort of private chapel is there formed; and from a fissure in the dome a monster column of ice had been constructed on the floor, which, at the time of my visit, had lost its upper parts, and stood as a hollow truncated cone with sides a foot thick, and with seas of ice streaming from it, and covering the rising pavement of the chapel.  Without an axe, and without help, I was unable to measure the girth of this column, which had not been without companions on a smaller scale in the immediate neighbourhood.  At the west end of the cave, the wall was thickly covered for a large space with small limestone stalactites, producing the effect of many tiers of fringe on a shawl; while from a dark fissure in the roof a large piece of fluted drapery of the same material hung, calling to mind some of the vastly grander details of the grottoes of Hans-sur-Lesse in Belgium:  down this wall there was also a long row of icicles, on the edges of a narrow fissure.  The north-west corner was very dark, and an opening in the wall of rock high above the ground suggested a tantalising cave up there:  the ground in this corner was occupied by the shattered remains of numerous columns of ice, which had originally covered a circular area between 60 and 70 feet in circumference.