Page:The Selkirk mountains (1912).djvu/132

116 Point. This is the first accessible entrance on the trail coming up the valley. The descent is by ladder for 10 or 12 feet to a small cavern with room only for three crouching persons. Off this, a crack barely wide enough to admit the body leads to a narrow chute which, in turn, descending some 20 feet to the "brink of space," can be negotiated by means of a rope. From the final ledge a stone will drop 60 feet and strike the brink of the Pit.

In addition to the three small passages leading to the Pit as described above, is another called the Marbleway from the likeness of its walls to glistening marble. It is a short corridor connecting two larger passages. The Pit is almost 20 feet in diameter and over 20 feet high. Its walls, like those of the Marbleway, are of dark bluish-grey limestone streaked with white calcite, with an effect as of forked lightning on a dead-black background. At the Bottom of the Pit is a slab of rock shaped like a tombstone with a distinctly marked cross (x) in its centre. The walls of the Pit-funnel are water-worn, showing how a stream once flowed into it from En trance No. 3 and carved out the whole chamber.

On our return to where the ways part, the lower and eastern passage is through separated limestone strata from 5 to 10 feet apart and called the Slanting Way, owing to the strata's dip: the upper one called the Subway, from 10 to 15 feet wide and from 2 to 7 feet high, has an arched roof. Both are strewn with fallen rock and difficult to traverse, especially the Subway on account of its low roof. On the east or left side (as you advance) of the Slanting Way are deep cracks in the strata from whose depths comes a loud noise of the subterranean waters. At a place about the middle, the crack expands allowing a descent to the stream's bed below a cavern called the Turbine which itself is reached by a rather difficult passage involving skill in climbing. The Turbine is so called owing to noise from waterspouts resembling sounds made by water falling into the pit of a turbine. Near the south end of the Slanting Way on its left hand side is the interesting pothole named on the map "Curious Pothole." Directly beyond it is the Art Gallery, so called from the florescent designs of overlying carbonate of lime, in color from cream to delicate salmon. Here the incrustation varies in thickness from 2 to 6 inches and the flowering is more beautiful than in other places of similar natural decoration.

Beyond the Art Gallery, the passage continues south-easterly, ever increasing in interest. Within the next 200 feet, it varies in width from 15 to 30 feet and in height from 10 to 15 feet. On the right is a narrow twisted opening named the Gimlet. On the left are two concave sections of ancient potholes leading to unknown depths, one named the Dome from its perfect form. Both are pro fusely ornamented with florescent incrustation. Among minor pas sages here, is one leading from the unnamed and southerly pothole to the Judgment Hall.

The Judgment Hall: In this section the subterranean river crosses the corrider some depth below, and its muflled roar is now heard from the right side, A narrow opening. 1½ feet wide, leads for some 15 feet to the Carbonate Grotto which has some fine floral designs. The cavern containing the grotto is about 30 by 60 feet in area and from 10 to 15 high. For the next 130 feet, the passage