Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

tion to Pluto, -a few minutes' walk places us many hundred feet vertically beneath the surface, and in the "Rotunda," an enlargement of the cave, which looks about as large as the interior of Trinity Church, but is in reality larger; being quite as lofty, and measuring at its greatest diameter a hundred and seventy-five feet.

Here, as we paused to look, with our flaring lamps poised above our heads, a strange squeaking noise was heard, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular. I glanced inquiringly at my guide, in answer to which he simply replied, “ Bats,” and pointed to the walls, where, on closer inspection, I found these creatures clinging by thousands, literally blackening the wall, and hanging in festoons a foot or two in length. The manner of forming these festoons was curious enough: three or four bats having first taken hold of some sharp projecting ledge with their hindmost claws, and hanging thereby with their heads downward, others had seized their leathery wings at the second joint, and they too, hanging with. downward heads, had offered their wings as holdingplaces for still others; and so the unsightly pendent mass had grown, until in some instances it contained as many as twenty or thirty bats. The wonder seemed that four or five pairs of little claws not so large as those of a mouse could sustain a weight that must have been in some instances as much as three pounds.

The mysterious influence of the approaching spring had penetrated even into these abodes of darkness, and aroused in the bats a little life after their long hibernation; and their weak, plaintive squeak, which had something impish in it withal, came from every shadowy recess, and from the dark vault overhead. This "Rotunda" should have been called the "Bower of Bats."

As they all hung too high to reach. by other means, I flung my stick at random upward against the wall, and brought down two of the black masses, that writhed helpless upon the stony

floor of the cave. Poor, palpitating things, unable to loose their clutch upon each other's wings, it was hard to say whether they were more disgusting or pitiful. What Eshcol clusters these, to bear back from this Canaan of darkness, saying, "This is the fruit of it!"

Such an immense number of bats had harbored and died here from time immemorial, that more than a hundred acres of the earthy floor of the cave had, from their decomposing remains, become impregnated with nitre; and during the years 1812 to 1814, a party, of saltpetre-makers took up their residence here. They made great vats in the cave, in which they lixiviated the impregnated earth, and by wooden pipes conveyed it to a place where they boiled the water drawn from the vats, Their rude mechanical contrivances are standing yet, in the same positions in which they were left so long ago; and so dry and pure is the air of the cave, that, though more than half a century has passed, these wooden pipes and vats show no more indication of decay than they did when first put in. In one place my guide dug up from the clayey floor - where it was their custom to feed the oxen employed in drawing the materials to and fro corn-cobs, very dry and light, but as perfect as though they were only a few months old.

[ocr errors]

some

The footprints of the oxen, made in the earth that was then moist, are plainly visible in many places; and the clay has since become almost as hard as stone, so that I found it difficult to make any impression in it with the point of my pocket-knife.

A few minutes' walk brought us in front of the "Giant's Coffin," an enormous rock forty feet in length, which has fallen from the ceiling. The resemblance to a coffin is so strangely exact, that, having heard mention of it before coming in, I recognized it at the first glance. The upper part of the rock is composed of a stratum whiter than the rest, and gives it the appearance of having a border of white ornamentation around it, just below the lid. It

rests upon a gigantic bier about ten feet high, and a little longer than the coffin, and the effect is as though some kingly son of Anak were lying in state in this huge sepulchral vault.

Near at hand is a cluster of objects, not carved out by the accidents of time or the long attrition of subterranean rivers, as is the case with almost everything else in the cave, but shaped by human hands into a mournful resemblance to cottages; the likeness being all the more pathetic when one learns the fact that for many months a number of benighted human beings made their home here, under the delusion that the air of the cave, which is chemically pure and dry, would cure their pulmonary diseases; and that here, like plants shut out from the generous, fostering sun, they paled and died.

66

The appearance of those who came out after two or three months' residence in the cave is described as frightful. "Their faces," says one who saw them, were entirely bloodless, eyes sunken, and pupils dilated to such a degree that the iris ceased to be visible; so that, no matter what the original color of the eye might have been, it appeared entirely black."

These cottages, if by a great stretch of courtesy I may call them such, are very small, consisting each of but one room about ten feet square; they had been built of stones collected in the cave, and laid loosely in the wall without mortar; they had fireplaces and chimneys, good wooden floors, and doors, but no windows, as there was neither light to let in nor prospect to view without. As there was neither rain nor snow fall, neither midday heat nor dew of night, beneath that stony cope, roofs also were useless; so that the structures were only cells that strongly reminded one of sepulchres. I can conceive of nothing more melancholy than the existence of the seven or eight consumptives, who I am told occupied these ante mortem tombs at one time about fifteen years ago. Three died there, and every one of the others who had resided in the cave for a pe

[ocr errors]

riod of two months died within two or three weeks after coming out.

Near to these monuments of ignorance and despair, I noticed a monument of another sort, and of later date, -a tribute to one of the most gallant and genial of men, in whom it was fully demonstrated that “the bravest are the tenderest." It was a pyramidal pile, about eight feet high, of carefully selected stones, laid without mortar, but with mathematical precision; and on one stone near the top was scratched a name dear to every soldier's heart,— "McPherson."

The cells where the living died, and this pile which tells how the memory of the dead yet lives, are the last objects on our route that have any association with the things of this outer world; these are the pillars that mark the beginning of a realm devoid of human association, its Pillars of Hercules, beyond which is a silent waste whose darkness breeds the wildest mysteries.

Walking continuously through the gloom, one loses to some extent the idea of progression. Here he can get no look ahead, no backward view. He is the centre of a little circle of light, beyond which is immeasurable darkness, whence objects seem to come to him like apparitions, changing form as the first and last rays of light fall upon them, as though the shape in which they appear under the full light of the lamp were only some disguise of assumed innocence, which they cast off as they glide silently into the dark again, to take on some semblance too awful for mortal eyes. Farther and farther we went along these arched, cryptlike ways; passing frequently through lofty chambers where the roof could not be discovered, each with some fanciful and often inappropriate name assigned to it, until we came at length to what looked like a window in the side wall of the cave. Peering through this, and holding my lamp high over my head, I could see neither roof nor sides nor bottom, only the wall in which was the window through which

I looked. Upward it was lost in the darkness, and from my breast it descended, perpendicular as a plummet line, until it vanished in the gulf below, from which arose a sound of dripping water. This, my guide informed me, was "Gorin's Dome." Taking then from his haversack a Bengal light, he ignited it and threw it into the dark void. The sulphurous light shot up and up into a dome unlike anything built by human hands, unless it might be the interior of some tremendous tower, eighty feet in width, and nearly two hundred in height, which the beholder viewed from without, looking inwards through a window placed at two thirds of the entire height from the bottom.

The inaccessible floor of this place is nearly level, and the walls strictly perpendicular from base to summit; the whole cavern having been hollowed out by the constant dripping of water holding carbonic acid in solution, which cuts the rock as ordinary water channels the ice of a glacier or the mural face of an iceberg into a semblance of columns, and sometimes into the folds of an immense curtain.

The brief light fell upon the distant floor; flashed up once, bringing into strong relief every salient angle in the wonderful walls, and then died out; the awful prospect vanishing like a nightmare vision, and leaving nothing to the sense but the sound of the water dripping into the depths below. The light had burned only half a minute; but so strange was the scene, that this glimpse sufficed to photograph it indelibly in my memory.

Gorin's Dome is not the largest of this class of sub-cavities in the cave, being smaller than Mammoth Dome; but it is the first of its class that the tourist sees, and it is viewed from so singular a stand-point that it makes the most startling impression.

673

dropped out, and the roof to have gone glimpse of the rock on the other side in search of it; and but for the dim bridge would launch him into that unone might have suspected that this geographical locality called, in the old Norse mythology, "Ginnunga Gap," — a place where there was neither side, edge, nor bottom to anything.

nerva's Dome"; the gulf below is called The vault overhead is called "Mithe "Side-Saddle Pit," though I failed to discover any degree of appropriateness in the odd name.

my guide flung one of his Bengal Standing in the middle of the bridge, lights far upward, in the midst of the slow falling drops that had already carved out this tremendous well and were still making it larger. The light turned them for an instant into a fell, down, down! As in its descent it shower of diamonds; then down it passed the bridge on which we stood, the shadows of our two figures rushed demons scared out of their abode by up the opposite wall, like a pair of the hissing flame; and Nick, the guide, as he leaned over, looking downward ble wrinkles in his black face made after it, every one of the innumeramustache, and the whites of his eyes more distinct, with his white beard and seeming to glow in the blue elfish light,

was a caricature, half grotesque, almost terrible, of Satan himself.

Minerva's Dome and Side-Saddle Pit, both being one place and formed spond to Gorin's Dome and the pit beby the same dripping water, correneath it; that part which has been holbeing called the dome, and the part lowed out above the roof of the cave below the floor of the cave the pit. The only difference between the two is that in the case of Gorin's Dome the dripping waters have bored their huge shaft on one side of the track of the cave, only just piercing the wall of it in

which it is viewed; while in the case
of the Side-Saddle Pit the vertical
shaft cuts directly across the track of
the cave, or, to speak more correctly,

Five minutes' farther walk brought one spot, to make the window through us to a wooden footbridge, -a narrow, shaky contrivance, with a treacherous footing and a slender hand-rail. Here the bottom of the cave seemed to have VOL. XX.NO. 122. 43

across the tunnel which was once the bed of a subterranean river, but which is now a broad, smooth, dry path.

The topography of this underground realm may be divided into three departments, as follows:

First, as being greatest in extent, -the "avenues," or tunnels, which present conclusive evidence of having once been the channels of a subterranean stream, whose waters, having some peculiar solvent property, wore their bed lower and lower in the rock, until they cut through into some lower opening, through which they were drawn off, leaving the old channels dry. Imagine one of the narrow, crooked streets in the old part of Boston, spanned by a continuous stone archway from the summits of the buildings on either hand; then close with solid masonry every window and loop-hole by which a ray of light could struggle in, and you have for proportions and sinuosity not a bad semblance of these tunnels, which constitute four fifths of the extent of the Mammoth Cave.

The second and next largest department is that of the "chambers." These are places in the general course of the former river where the roof fell in before the withdrawal of the waters, opening great spaces upward; the fallen mass forming a sort of island in the centre of the stream, and crowding the waters on either side of it against the walls of the cave, so that they were worn out to twice the average width, and finally itself disappearing under the combined action of the current and the solvent properties of the water.

The air in all these tunnels and chambers is remarkably dry and pure. Wood seems never to decay here; as is instanced in the wooden pipes and vats of the saltpetre-makers, upon which the lapse of a half-century has not had any visible effect.

The general width of the tunnels or avenues is about forty or fifty feet, and the average height about thirty feet; but this uniformity is broken every few hundred yards by chambers, varying in width from eighty to two

hundred feet, and in height from seventy to two hundred and fifty feet. The floor is formed in some places of sand, but generally of indurated mud, so hard that it is impossible to make any indentation in it with the heel of the boot, and remarkably even and smooth, so that almost anywhere one can walk with as much ease as on city sidewalks. The walls also are clean and smooth, as in the arched crypts of some mighty cathedral. A cross section of almost any one of these tunnels would show an elliptic outline, the vertical diameter being the shortest, and the bottom being filled with indurated mud or sand to a sufficient depth to make a level floor.

The third division or class of openings is that of the "domes" and "pits." These were formed by the same kind of agency as the tunnels and chambers, namely, by the action of water holding carbonic acid in solution; but acting in a different manner, and at a period long after the subterranean river had ceased to flow through its tunnels.

The solvent acid of the water must be acquired in percolating through the several hundreds of feet of superincumbent earth and sandstone, as there is but one of these domes, "Sandstone Dome," that extends upward to the sandstone. The solvent water then, after finding its way into the vertical crevices of the limestone, gradually rounded them out like wells, until the pieces which occasionally fell from the top formed a sort of floor. Through the interstices of this floor, the dissolved substance of the rock is carried into some deeper and yet undiscovered cavities beneath. The floor itself gradually sinks, the domes grow higher, and the walls recede as long as the water continues to drip into them.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that the substratum of limestone in all the country for many miles in the vicinity is perforated with these tremendous shafts; as those which are seen in the cave are only such as happened to be in the course of the tunnels composing

the Mammoth Cave. It is not improbable that there are many others on every side, close to the line of the tunnels, but not yet connected with them.

In any one of the above-mentioned departments, the description of one place answers for most others, except in dimensions. The following are a few out of many hundreds of measurements taken in as many different places : — The " Rotunda," the first chamber from the entrance of the cave, is about one hundred feet high, and one hundred and seventy-five in diameter.

The "Methodist Church," eighty feet in diameter, and forty in height.

Wright's Rotunda" is four hundred feet in its shortest diameter, being nearly circular; the roof seems perfectly level, and is about forty-five feet high.

66

Although the distance of nine miles is about as far as tourists usually get from the entrance, that is by no means the measure of its extent, but only the extent of the direct route; there being a number of other tunnels branching off from it on either side, some of which connect with it again at a distance of several miles, and some of which have not been explored to their connection, if they have any.

The total length of all the explored avenues is estimated at over one hundred miles. If a single day's experience in the cave were sufficient ground: for offering an opinion, I should say that this was a large over-estimate; but I have no doubt that, like all other great works of both art and nature, it grows upon the sense of the beholder. But even setting down its extent at

Kinney's Arena" is a hundred feet half the foregoing estimate, none can in diameter, and is fifty feet high.

"Proctor's Arcade" is one hundred feet in width and three quarters of a mile in length. The walls, which are about forty-five feet high, are nearly perpendicular throughout the whole length of the arcade, joining the roof nearly at right angles, and are so smooth that they look like hammer-dressed stone.

"Silliman's Avenue" is a mile and a half in length and about forty feet in height, its width varying from twenty to two hundred feet.

"Shelby's Dome" and the pit beneath it are two hundred and thirtyfive feet in height, and about twentyfive in diameter.

"Mammoth Dome" is two hundred and fifty feet high, and nearly one hundred in diameter.

"Lucy's Dome," the highest in the cave, is sixty feet in diameter, and three hundred in height.

Nine miles from the entrance of the cave is the "Maelström," a dry pit or well, one hundred and seventy-five feet deep, and about twenty in diameter; and from the bottom of this shaft may be seen the openings to three other avenues, which lead farther into this Plutonian labyrinth than mortal foot has ever trod.

tread these hollow chambers, thinking of others unexplored, and extending not. only from that distant nine-mile-station, but on every hand, into the unknown, without a feeling of awe and fear.

Thus on and on through the echoing avenues, where the reverberation of our footsteps seemed to follow stealthily far behind us, through chamber and hall, where my guide in the advance flung up his lights, revealing for an instant the grim and distant vaults, through "Star Chamber," five hundred feet long, seventy in width, and sixty in height, "Cloud Room," a quarter of a mile in length, sixty feet in height, “Deserted Chamber," "River Hall," "Revellers' Hall," "The Great Walk," through all these, and a dozen more, we wandered, until, after two hours' walk, and at a distance of four and a half miles from the entrance to the cave, I paused upon the muddy banks of the "Styx," and, stooping, dipped up in my hands a draught from its cold, sunless waters.

Here my guide would willingly have played Charon to my Ulysses, but as no one had penetrated thus far into the cave for several months, the boat used to carry visitors over, and to voyage up and down the short river (only a

« AnteriorContinuar »