CHAPTER IX - THE DRAGON KING'S CAVERN AND DOME: ICHANG

Summary

IT had really been too hot to write an account of our expedition to the Dragon King's Cavern and the Dome, through the wonderful conglomerate region to the south and east of Ichang. This is as different as possible from the by comparison graceful and pleasing limestone country of the Ichang Gorge. But much more noteworthy, for, as far as I know, the only other example of it on at all as large a scale is Montserrat in Spain. We started in the afternoon, A. and I taking chairs, Mr M. trusting to his feet alone, but he had in the end to be carried pick-a-back over the stream, which we crossed and recrossed till I was almost tired of it. We only got into the conglomerate country towards evening, huge blocks of rock fallen down, and as A. pointed out to me, with the granite pebbles, which go to their making, generally broken in two, thus showing not only how violent had been the force of their disruption but how strong the conglomerate mixture that united them. Dry rivers with stony beds, mountains with bulging sides, always the cracks in them horizontal and quite straight, as if ruled by a ruler, and with little holes like those that come in a plum pudding in the boiling, reminding one of their common name of pudding-stone. The valleys here do not grow narrower and more winding as one goes up them, but end quite abruptly in precipices.