ages, have gradually raised the floor of the cavern, so as to render it
difficult to pass between the edges of the new surface and the
circumference of the cavern.

Beyond is a second excavation about fourteen yards long: ten in width,
where broadest, and eight in height; proportions which an architect
would have chosen. At the highest extremity of this appears a recess
formed entirely of petrified matter, around which the irregular
projections of native rock are covered with an incrustation white as
snow; and in many parts appear stalactites suspended from point to
point, like light festoons of ice, which, if struck, return all the
notes of musical glasses. In the midst of this recess arises from a
pedestal, clear almost as glass, an amber altar. Beneath, but still in
the roof of the cavern, is another circular excavation resembling an
immense helmet, which seems to be lined with rich satin, and is fringed
with rows of yellow stalactite about the edges. Those who suffer their
imaginations to wanton in the scenes of subterranean demonology, may
here discover the cabinet of the "Swart Faery of the Mine," while the
sober geologist will find matter of rational and curious speculation; he
will detect nature herself at work on a process uniformly advancing; so
that by piercing the perpendicular depth of the incrustation on the
floor of the first cavern, and by comparing with accuracy the additional
laminae, which in a few years will be superinduced, he may ascertain
with tolerable exactness, the period which has elapsed since those
mighty convulsions by which these caverns have been produced.--
_Whitaker's History of Craven._

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