The only appreciable sounds were the dripping and tinkling of
water failing into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal floors.
In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing
folds deeply plicated like stiff silken drapery. In others straight
lines of the ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to
size and tone in a regularly graduated system like the strings of a harp
with musical tones corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps we
played by striking the crystal strings with a stick. The delicious
liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly
whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away in
faintest cadence,--the music of fairy-land. Here we lingered and
reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much
splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains,
buildings ever in process of construction, yet ever finished, developing
from perfection to perfection, profusion without overabundance; every
particle visible or invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music
of the spheres in a region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness
and death.
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