Bats!... millions of black little mammals drifting along the horizon and
seeming to fuse into the hazy clouds of a New Mexico sunset! That was
the spectacle which led Jim White, back at the turn of the century, to
become interested in the colossal phenomenon designated by Act of
Congress as Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
If you could ask him about it today, Jim’s eyes would probably turn
inward as he’d muse and remember. “I thought it was a volcano—but then
I’d never seen one. For that matter, I’d never seen bats fly. I had seen
plenty of prairie whirlwinds during my life on the range, but this thing
didn’t move. It seemed to stay in one spot near the ground—but the top
kept spinning upward. I watched maybe a half-an-hour, and being about as
curious as the next fellow, I started toward the place”.
Jim White, native of Mason County, Texas, grew up ranching ...
surrounded by the cattle-business, without even a grammar school
education. Jim would have preferred bustin’ broncos to books and
blackboards even if there had been a little log schoolhouse on his
native soil. So it was an experienced ten-year-old range-rider who
teamed up with John and Dan Lucas of the X-X-X Ranch in New Mexico,
three miles or so from the entrance to the cave. Jim White spent eight
or ten years on the range surrounding Lucas’ Ranchhouse, and like the
other rangemen, had known of “the bat cave”, but he had felt no
impelling urge to see what was hiding in its darkness.
Then came the day of the bat-flight. Crawling through the rocks and
brush, Jim White approached the spot from which the bats seemed
literally to boil. The incredulous young range-rider made a feeble guess
about the number of bats—could think no further than millions—but
realized that any hole with capacity for that many bats must be a whale
of a big affair. Creeping still closer, Jim finally lay on the brink of
the chasm and looked down ... into awesome, impenetrable blackness.
Torn between awe and curiosity, Jim did the natural thing for a man
familiar with desert ranges.
“I piled up some dead cactus and built a bonfire. When it was burning
good, I took a flaming stalk and pushed it off into the hole. Down,
down, down it went until the flame went out—and I still watched until
the embers sprinkled on the rocks below. Seemed the thing wouldn’t ever
stop, but later it measured about thirty or forty feet from where I
dropped the fire down to that faraway bottom. I kicked the remainder of
the fire into the hole and watched it fall. The bats seemed to be
scared, and for several minutes none flew out. Soon as the embers died,
though, they boiled up again. I watched another hour or so, then went
back to camp.”
[Illustration: _750 Feet Underground, the Temple of the Sun in the
Big Room_]
The fence-building crew, camped in the vicinity at the time, heard not a
word from their companion about his observation.