CAVES AND CAVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 103, 4 May 1925, Page 9

CAVES AND CAVES.

THE KARAMU DISCOVERY. (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star." ' HAMILTON, Saturday. ! In the Hakareamata Range of hills, I which runs along by Ngaruawahia on to Pirongia and then on to the high lands of tho King Country, there are no doubt many caves as yet undiscovered and unexplored. From time to time, adventurous spirits enter the various caverns and are well repaid by tho wonders that nature has been building through the ages. The other day another of Nature's art galleries, this time in the Kararau Valley, about 20, miles from Hamilton by a fair road, was entered. While not anywhere near the size of Waitomo, and not having the beauty of the Glow Worm Temple there, this new chamber lias some very beautiful stalactites and stalacmites. The entrance is through a small bole (a fat man's misery), high in a limestone bluff, and then a slide down inside on a mud incline. Tbe first feature that strikes one is the flat limestone roof, built seemingly of huge flagstones. In side chambers, as the visitor passes along, pretty statuettes are to be seen, mostly of a chocolate colour and of almost every conceivable form. At one point, about loft up the wall, through an orifice of perfect white alabaster, comes a deep brown stalactite in Materfall formation for two feet, and then spreads out with the stalacmite beneath, making a model of an Oriental temple six feet high. In another corner is a charming miniature of a Greek temple with Corinthian columns. Right at the top of the cave is the finest work all all, a natural memorial cenotaph, standing some 12ft high, with a central pillar going up to the roof of the cave. This piece is stained chocolate colour with iron, and is surrounded by clusters of thin crystal tubes. The visitor has to be very careful in wandering through the cave, for there are many deep crevices and holes which could easily prove fatal to tbe unwary, and also there is mud withe..- end.