On entering the
caverns you experience a thrill of strange emotion and mute
wonder. One speaks, if at all, in whispers. It is too much for
your imagination to grasp at once and you are overwhelmed as
much as you were on first seeing Niagara. Here is silence such
as never came to the outer world, darkness that far exceeds the
blackest midnight; glittering stalactites that gleam like
diamonds from the ceiling above; massive artistic drapery which
falls in graceful folds; cascades of rarest beauty formed by
stone of marble whiteness, in place of falling water; tinted
walls like evening skies; all these seen by the gleam of
brilliant electric lights fill one with admiration and deepest
awe. Here the Master Artist has carved spacious palaces of
rarest beauty. Columns of yellowish-brown, resembling
transparent amber, support great vaulting domes above you. These
lovely pillars seem to rise toward their proper arches as
majestically as those of Rheims, Amiens, and Cologne, only here
we find "no signs of decay" and "they never knew the cruel
ravages of war."
This calls to memory a visit to the Steen, the old Spanish
prison built in the eighth century in the city of Antwerp. A
crowd of English soldiers and American doughboys were viewing
the time-worn relics of the place when they found an old map of
the world dating from the year 1300, A.
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