Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/552

546 inconspicuous that I did not specially notice it when passing the place on former occasions. Though not originally large, the entrance has been narrowed by rude masonry and a wooden door placed therein. Our officer-guide opened the door by means of an ordinary key which he brought with him, an attendant furnished each of us with a lighted taper, and we began our march into the darkness.

The artificial character of the cave was at once apparent from the presence of numerous rude piers of the original stone which were left by the quarrymen to support the roof and that part of the city which rests upon it. The floor has the general eastward dip of the strata and, although not very even, it was nowhere difficult to traverse. The height of the roof above the floor differs considerably at different places, probably because of the varying thickness of the fine part of the Royal stratum. In some places it is hardly more than ten feet, but in others I estimated the height at twenty feet or more. We walked through the long rude corridors, mostly in a southerly and southeasterly direction, reaching a distance from the entrance that I estimated to be not less than a quarter of a mile. I made no estimate of the cubic contents of the cave, but its great size gave me a distinct impression that it is large enough to have furnished all the fine stone that was required for the grand buildings of the ancient city and of its successive rehabilitations.

As we progressed southward from the entrance the west limiting wall came occasionally into view. It appeared to be quite uneven and I detected there no conditions of the rock which I thought attributable to systematic quarrying such as those which I soon afterward observed in other parts of the cave. For that, and the other reasons already mentioned, I think all the Malaké stone which originally existed on the west side and extended to the surface in reverse direction of the dip, was long ago removed and its place supplied with rejected and inferior stone. When we reached the south and east limiting walls of the cave, we found them perpendicular and bearing abundant marks made by the quarrymen. The character of the great excavation and the peculiar quarry-marks which we found upon its walls left no room for doubt as to its great antiquity nor of the fact that it was wholly the work of human hands. What we saw also agreed with numerous well-known legends and with trustworthy historical references to quarry caves of this kind. The surfaces, which bear the marks referred to having never been exposed to the weather nor to extremes of heat and cold, have remained unchanged, and even those marks which were made by the cutting tools of the workmen are still plainly visible. Fragments of their burnt-clay lamps and water bottles are also occasionally found in the scanty debris, which was produced by their peculiar