Essay on the Theory and History of Cohesive Construction - Applied Especially to the Timbrel Vault, Read Before the Society of Arts, Massachusets Institute of Technology, Boston #245569

It was in October, 1871, when I made my acquaintance with this estate, which is four miles from the railroad station -of Alhama, Aragon, a noted hot-spring resort. Here, in that Monasterio de Piedra, I saw a grotto of immense grandeur, one of the most sub lime and extraordinary works of nature. Imagine Trinity Church, Boston, covered by an immense natural vault, supported by walls of the same nature, with gigantic stalactites of all kinds of forms and dimensions, like great chandeliers, hanging from above; the floor a lake, receiving the whole light through an immense ventinel or opening, like a rosette window in a cathedral, covered by the fall of the full mass of water of the river Jalon, its builder, passes over the vault and precipitated more than two hundred feet, taking the form in its fall of a horse's tail, which is the source of its name, Cola de Caballo.