Going out from here we enter another crevice which serves as a steep stairway descending to a lower level, and measures from top to bottom one hundred and eighteen feet.  This is called Rip Van Winkle’s Stairway, and although merely a high and crooked crack in the rock, is very beautiful because heavily coated with crystal, the effect being especially striking at the top where the crystal is partly worn away and leaves exposed patches of red rock.

At the foot of the Stairway is the first room containing water, and is called the Gypsy Camp.  It is the most charming chamber yet visited, with not the smallest spot of plain or common rock visible.  The ceiling, walls, floor, and groups of fallen rocks, are all unbroken masses of pearly calcite in crystals of varied sizes, with here and there a patch coated over with pure white carbonate of lime, or supporting a bunch of fragile egg-shell, which is a thin, hollow crust of lime carbonate, almost invariably having the pointed form of the dog-tooth spar.  And there are also beautiful mats and banks of dainty white carbonate flowers.  While waiting here for the guide to go in quest of the lunch we had carelessly left behind, the time was utilized in measuring the room, which is a small one.  The size of the cave and our limited time for seeing it, prevented much-desired measurements from being taken in all parts of the cave.

This room was found to be forty-eight feet long, the irregular width varied from fourteen to thirty feet and the height from four and one-half to ten feet.  The crystal water basin is especially beautiful and the water so clear that we stood looking into it with disappointment, being thirsty and thinking it dry, until the guide laughingly dipped and offered a cupful.  The basin is the segment of a circle rounding beneath a massive, overhanging crystal ledge of wonderful beauty, and is nine feet long by two in width.  This room and the Stairway into it are alone worthy of a visit, but there is much that is finer still.

Out of Gypsy Camp by way of Gunny Sack Crawl, so named by the workmen who spread gunny sacks to relieve the torture of crawling over the beautiful floor of sharp crystals, we enter the first chamber, where active operation is still maintained and certain branches of the great decorative industry of the cave may be carefully studied.  This operative chamber, which is unnamed, would no doubt be called a factory in the east, but in its own locality would more likely be referred to as The Works.

The next chamber entered is Crystal Flat, whose floor is completely covered with immense crystal blocks, and the wonderful crystal ceiling is exceedingly fine.  But time being limited we must pass on into the Lake Room, where is Crystal Lake, the largest body of water in the cave.  It is about thirty feet long by fifteen wide and its greatest depth is said to be ten feet.  The water is cold and clear, and the gold fish introduced as an experiment three years ago are said to have grown rapidly but not yet turned white, and are not known to have become blind.