English: Dr. E. Wyllys Andrews, leader of the National Geographic Society Expedition working nearby, was immediately summoned to inspect the discovery. Arriving into the cave, he was astonished when he saw with the beam of his headlamp hundreds of glittering stalactites surrounding a huge stalagmite (resembling a ceiba tree) which stretched from floor to ceiling in the center of the enormous vault. Carefully placed around the base of this unusual geological formation, said to be the "sacred tree inside the earth", were a great variety of ceremonial objects, offering to the rain god Tlaloc and left undisturbed through centuries of darkness.