As the day was passing far too rapidly and many points of special interest yet remained unseen, we turned with reluctance from the beauty and relief from the hardships of exploration in the Catacombs, and made our way over a crevice into Santa Claus’ Pass, which was traversed for a considerable distance and then abandoned for a low crawl terminating at the Senate Chamber.  This is a large room extending to Poverty Flat, and is brilliantly red and purely white, most of the crystal presenting a smooth surface.  Under the Senate Chamber there is said to be some fine box work which we had no time to visit.  The name of this chamber was given by a visiting party composed of members of both houses of Congress.  A smaller room, which is really an extension of the Senate Chamber, has handsome walls of white and red box work on account of which the same distinguished party called it the Senate Post-office.

From here a difficult crawl, through red rock, well-worn by the action of water, leads to the Starr Chamber, another large room in white and red, and named by Senator Starr of South Dakota.

Opening out from the last room is a curious, dangerous looking, narrow, crevice-chamber known as Suicide Room on account of the threatening appearance of over-hanging rocks, some of which have at times fallen in great masses of various sizes to form an irregular floor; and a descent of this is necessary in order to reach a short and extremely rough crawl, beautifully and painfully decorated with sharp crystals above and below and on the sides.  From this we emerge into Rainy Chamber, an elliptical room not less than two hundred feet long by one hundred feet wide, with a tent-like ceiling rising high in the center and sloping down to meet the floor, which also slopes irregularly toward a deep central depression, giving the room a greater height than any other visited.  The high points are generally seen in the narrow crevices, while the rooms of generous length and breadth are usually low, many of the largest having an average of five feet or even less.

Although there is frequent intersection of crevices, and each chamber has passages leading out on every side, the general direction of the cave is said to be northwest-southeast.

Rainy Chamber is named from the fact that during the early months of summer water falls constantly in the form of a light shower; but it drips at all times, and in consequence there is an opportunity to study the active process of formation of one of the deposits which is very abundant in Wind Cave and considered the most perplexing.  This is the pop-corn, and the theories of its origin have been steadily rejected at Wind Cave because of a doubt being entertained as to whether it has been deposited under water or by drippings.  Here in Rainy Chamber it is fully explained.  Near the center of the room the fallen masses are heavily crystallized, much of the groundwork being fine box work and the crystals in perfect condition.