we sat down to lunch, before re-ascending the rope ladder, and carrying
our baggage through a series of awkward holes and pits, all deluged
with water, into the big chamber at the head of the main passages.
In this chamber, whose walls, floor, and roof are formed of gigantic
blocks seemingly on the point of collapsing, is an opening in the
roof, through which a stream comes tumbling in. At the farthest corner
therefrom a large opening leads to the bottom of a chimney or aven.
Great quantities of clay on walls and roof show that this cavern has
frequently been filled with water through the choking up of the lower
exit. The stream runs away into the rocky floor at the lower end of
the cave, and a few feet above it is a flood-way, a short, low tunnel,
through which we crawled. Then begins one of the most interesting
portions of the cavern. In one of those broad, low-roofed fissures,
inclined at the same angle of fifty degrees as the general dip of
the strata, and formed, in fact, by the widening of a bedding-plane
in the Limestone strata, a deep, winding channel has been cut by the
stream we have just passed. It has been called, from its likeness, the
Canyon. For a considerable distance our path lies down the Canyon,
and with our heavy burdens we find the passage far from easy. As far
as possible, we keep near the top of the ravine, straddling across.
Sometimes, however, there is no help for it but to drop right to the
bottom. Before we reach its termination, we have to climb out on the
smooth, sloping floor of the main fissure, and wriggle forwards lying
on our sides or on our backs. Foot-hold and hand-hold being singularly
scarce hereabouts, we shall find this one of the most troublesome
places in returning. On the right, we have a glimpse through a hole
here and there of another great low-roofed fissure sloping at the same
angle; then there are cross roads, with a tunnel on the left admitting
to a stalactite chamber, and a passage on the right leading to the
lower end of the Canyon.
We now reached the most constricted portion of the main channel. It is
a low, roundish tunnel, with an S curve at the distant end. A good deal
of our locomotion might be likened to crawling through drain-pipes;
we were now coming to a sort of trap. The S bend has to be taken with
the body lying on its right side. Once in it, the explorer cannot turn
round, since the diameter every way only just admits a human body,
and the three curves are close together. My candle went out half-way
through, and to unjam my arm and get it down for the waterproof matches
was a difficult and protracted operation. Moving the luggage through
was a very severe task, the width of the hole at one spot being only
nine and a half inches.
We issued into a good-sized passage. Immediately on the left a twisting
fissure went down to the head of the first perpendicular drop; but,
leaving this for a while, we spent nearly an hour exploring the
lofty chamber straight ahead of us. It rises to an unknown height in
a vertical fissure, narrowing gradually. At the bottom is a deep
cutting, which some of us passed by back and knee work, at a height
above the floor. On the left, that is the eastern, wall are openings
into a parallel tunnel with good stalactites. At the far end both this
tunnel and the passage itself are blocked with clay and gravel.[3] On
our second visit, a day or two later, I explored a tunnel in the other
wall 10 feet from the floor. It led into another of the vast sloping
fissures already described, which I was too much exhausted to explore
very far. These fissures, all inclined at the same angle, and either
parallel or else lying in one plane, are most impressive features of
the Eastwater Cavern; their extent is evidently enormous, and it seems
as if only a few frail pillars of jammed stones served to prevent the
great mass of the hill from settling down and crushing roof and floor
together. On a more minute survey it may turn out that these are all
portions of one huge fissure, merely partitioned off by different
chokes.
[3] Recently, October 1906, Mr. Balch dug through an obstruction here
and entered a vast fissure chamber, which he climbed to a height of
150 feet: it has a remarkable shaft as its outlet.
It was four in the afternoon when we entered the twisting fissure
leading to the first vertical descent, and two of the party had now
to return. Through an oversight in not bringing a short rope for
harnessing the pulley, nearly two hours were spent in rigging up the
tackle, the situation being awkward for letting men down safely. We
were ensconced in a little chamber, the boulder floor of which opened
into the top of a narrow rift widening downwards, where, about 60 feet
beneath, the walls funnelled into a yawning pit 60 feet deep. This pit
had been explored previously, and was found to be choked at the bottom;
it formed a safe and certain receptacle for anything lost or dislodged
by persons descending the cliff above it. The configuration of our hole
was such that only one man at a time could get a steady pull on the
life-line, which ran over a pulley. A manilla rope was therefore let
down from the same belaying-pin, for a man to climb up and down by, so
far as he was able, the life-line being used merely as a safeguard. One
by one the explorers dropped over into the abyss. The last three or
four had the best of it, since, with a hauling party below, full use
could be made of the pulley.
We were now drawing nigh to the final tug of war. A quarter of an hour
of indescribable wriggling brought us to a narrow and lofty rift, into
which as many of the party as it would accommodate wedged themselves,
right over the second vertical drop. Much the same tactics were
resorted to here, save that, instead of a fixed pulley, each man in
turn had a large steel pulley belted to him, through which ran 200 feet
of rope, one end fixed to a wedged boulder beneath us, the other end
in the hands of the hauling party. A 90-foot manilla was, as before,
allowed to hang free, as a guide-rope, over the crags, and enabled each
man to do something for himself and assist those above. Only four men
essayed this last descent.
The gigantic cavity into which we now dropped is one of the most savage
and impressive things it has ever been my lot to see. At the top,
over the heads of the hauling party, it runs up into the rocky mass
of the hill as a vertical chimney, under the mouth of which lay what
appeared to be a deep black pit. We alighted, one by one, on a sloping
shelf that traversed the side of the cavity at a considerable height.
Creeping along this ledge, we saw at the end of it a huge cavernous
opening descending into darkness, with a mighty rock wedged across it
like a bridge. The black, gaunt walls on each side of us were craggy
and rifted; their surfaces glistened with streaming water. Our ledge
ending abruptly, we dropped, hand over hand, on the rope, to the edge
of a large pothole, into which a stream was rushing. At this point a
tunnel goes off to the left, and, as it had not been explored, I was
asked by Mr. Balch to proceed down it. Two of us crept and clambered
and slid down a very dirty watercourse, till, at a distance of perhaps
50 yards, we found ourselves atop of a high clay bank, closely overhung
by rocks, with a stream rumbling along to the south-south-west. I got
within 10 feet of the water, but without a rope to get us up again
we would not venture farther. We had now been in the cave nine and a
half hours, and were too much fatigued to undertake new work. It was
ascertained, beyond reasonable doubt, that a fine series of potholes
that exist in the continuation of the great cavity must drain into the
stream just discovered. Beyond those potholes, to pass which involves
much hard work, is another cavity, and beyond that what?--at present no
one can tell. All we know is, that the water finds its way ultimately
into the vast reservoirs inside Wookey Hole; but whether there are
other vast cavities, or merely narrow crevices and impassable clefts
between, is a question that will require labours almost Herculean to
solve.
In scrambling back along the ledge in the big cavity I gave the
final shove to a dangerous loose rock weighing something like six
hundredweight. It fell into the ravine beneath, and hurtled onwards
toward the chain of potholes, making the whole grim place ring with a
crash of echoes. It took us two hours and a half to return to the cave
mouth, although we were unencumbered with apparatus, for we had left
the ropes and pulleys in place for another descent. Getting seven men
up the higher of the two vertical pitches was a tough undertaking at
the end of an arduous day, and when we returned through the famous S
tunnel more than one explorer seemed disposed to snatch a sleep on its
procrustean bed. We had been twelve hours underground when we revisited
the glimpses of the moon.
It had been proposed to continue the exploration next day, but no one
was fit for such a repetition of exhausting labours. The day following,
a party of three was mustered to recover the apparatus that had been
left in the depths. Two of us reached the head of the nethermost pitch,
and after hours of severe work got everything up to the mouth of the
swallet. Once more we drove back over Mendip in the dark. All around
us on the desolate plateau was impenetrable gloom, but in the northern
sky, and it seemed but a few miles away, the lights of Bath and Bristol
flared across the heavens like two immense conflagrations. Never does
one feel the sublimity of the open, windy earth, the starry sky, and
the free sense of space, so profoundly as after striving for a long
day to break through the barriers that shut us out from the regions of
mystery under the hills.
E. A. B.
SWILDON'S HOLE
An insignificant crevice, a hole scarcely wide enough to tempt a dog
or fox, alone gives admittance to what is perhaps the wildest and
most magnificent cavern in Britain. Swildon's Hole, it has already
been stated, lies at the same level, 780 feet above the sea, as the
Eastwater Swallet and that of Hill Grove. It lies in a separate trough,
within the same basin as the Eastwater stream, with whose waters it
unites somewhere in the bowels of the rocky hills, to flow out of
Wookey Hole as the river Axe, of which it may be considered as the
principal feeder. A few years ago the actual swallet was visible,
the brooklet running away into holes under a bank of earth and rock
crowned with foliage. More recently, in order to make a small fish
pond, the landowner has made a dam above the swallet, which is entirely
concealed by this means, an entrance remaining, however, into the maze
of cavities and waterways through a narrow crevice at the side. Mr.
Balch was the first person to recognise the importance of Swildon's
Hole as a chief feeder of the Axe, and in 1901 he made preparations to
explore it. But through some delay, three members of his party were the
first to enter the cave, without him--namely, Messrs. Troup and H. and
F. Hiley. A short while after, Mr. Balch was able to carry out a more
extended exploration. Then for some time no one entered the swallet,
which gradually became choked with stones and litter brought down by
the stream. Very few had ever heard of the cave, and hardly anyone
realised that one of the most beautiful pieces of underground scenery
in Britain was lying there unseen, and one of the most important of
hydrological problems remaining quite unsolved.
The next visit took place about Christmas 1904. Mr. Troup, who had been
one of the first in the cave, took the lead of our party. My other
companions were Messrs. Bamforth and E. E. Barnes, but we expected to
be joined some hours later by Mr. Balch and Mr. Slater.
When the first explorers entered this cavern some little while ago,
they met with serious difficulties owing to the presence of ancient
chokes or dams that held back pools of water, but they were assisted
by the dryness of the weather. We, on the contrary, made our descent
after a period of heavy rains, and the volume of water that accompanied
us down was twentyfold as great. We had one advantage, however: the
original discoverers were with us to point the way. With luggage
reduced to a minimum, two ropes, plenty of illuminants, food, and
two cameras, we passed through the uninviting entrance, and attacked
methodically a close-packed mass of débris that had been washed into a
narrow gut since the former visit.
Whilst we lay at work, the sound of falling water in the depths below
broke on our ears, a musical but ominous salutation. The obstacle
wasted two hours of valuable time. Wriggling through at last, feet
foremost, our legs came out over the rift, a narrow chasm some 20 feet
deep, with the head stream of the cavern tumbling in over a choke-stone
at one end. Our goods were let down carefully into the hands of the
first man, who lodged them in a sheltered spot whilst we scrambled
hastily down through showers of spray. Now began a painful advance into
the depths. Along the tilted bedding planes, down the perpendicular
joints of the Limestone, widened by the water into broad, low chambers
and deep shafts and canyons, we forged ahead, hugging the stream, which
grew larger and angrier as tributaries came swishing in from walls and
roof. At one point the water swept horizontally along a straight canal,
but was stopped at the end by a recent choke, and now tumbled through a
hole in the wall into a huge pothole. Through this lay our road.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE OF SWILDON'S HOLE.
_Photo by M. Martel._]
[Illustration: WATERFALL, SWILDON'S HOLE.
_Photo by H. E. Balch._]
The water poured down a staircase of similar basins, where to keep
clear of the stream was impossible. So far we had kept tolerably dry,
but as we clung to this watery ladder I pricked up my ears at the
remark, "Will you have your back or your stomach in it?" Crouching on
all fours, with back pressed against the low roof, and looking between
my legs, I watched the performances of my comrades, as each in turn
went through the final archway. Not one escaped a severe wetting.
But I was going to be more wily--at least, I thought so. With hands
and knees in the rushing stream, I squirmed hastily but cautiously
through. I seemed to be getting on famously, and gave a spurt. That
moment the rocks ended; they were undercut. I found myself sliding
down a waterfall 10 feet high, and floundering in a big pool at the
bottom. Drenched we were; but what better preparation could we have for
the troubles ahead? This part of the cavern shows traces of enormous
changes in the course of the stream, which has planed down great masses
of stalagmite, the growth of ages, when this section of the tunnels was
dry or all but deserted by the streams, which found a way down by the
horizontal canal or some higher channel. Between this first water-chute
and the second lies the most nerve-trying part of the journey to the
farthest point hitherto attained. It is a succession of lofty rifts,
giving into each other at right angles, the water sweeping from one to
the next through curving fissures and sudden falls. For a while we kept
above the canyons on a water-worn shelf, all that remained of a low,
flattish chamber that sufficed for the small streams of older times.
This giving out, we scrambled along the cliffs of the canyons, which
seemed in the gloom without top or bottom, bestraddling the rift, or
with feet on one side and back to the other pushing on from hold to
hold. The Limestone grips would have been amply sufficient for this
mode of progression had they not been drenched and slippery. Below us
the waters raced and bellowed. At the junctions of the canyons they
sounded on all sides at once; the invisible hollows all round seemed
to be alive with angry voices, mad to be at us. What if a thunderstorm
burst over Mendip now? Such thoughts would occur, although we knew we
could climb into safety on the upper shelves of the canyon; for with a
water-chute above and another below, a little flood would make us fast
prisoners.
At the Well, the stream tumbles suddenly into a deep round pit, in
which it is churned to foam before being driven out with accelerated
speed along a rugged gorge to the second staircase of potholes. Shreds
of magnesium ribbon dropped into the Well lit up such a turmoil of
waters as one might see in some gigantic turbine going at full speed.
Two of us now went ahead to report on the condition of the next stage.
The gorge was too wide for climbing, but we found a footing on the
rocks in the bed, then squirmed through a narrow fissure, and began to
descend the potholes. These were deep basins, with high walls on the
upper side where the stream poured in, and the other side broken down
by the force of the torrent. Below them lay the second water-chute,
a big fall pitching into a hole underneath a low arch, and sliding
out into a turbulent pool. It was a sort of culvert, with very little
head-room above the water. Had we not come through so many tribulations
already, and had we not known of the glories that awaited us in the
great stalactite chamber beyond this last trial, we should certainly
have been turned back by this obstacle. After some little hesitation
we resolved to attempt it, and went back to the head of the Well for
our companions. One of the cameras had already been left behind; it was
decided to leave the other here. The leader went down the water-chute
on his back; the rest adopted all the other attitudes possible short
of a complete header. But it made little difference; all got a most
effectual drenching.
Running the gauntlet beneath another tributary, which came swishing
in just over our heads, we pushed on into a high and ample chamber,
where in times gone by a volume of water had accumulated in a sort of
gigantic cistern. The rocky roof was flat and smooth, its cracks and
fissures fringed with meandering lacework of stalactite. In front,
the rocky mole that once held up the reservoir was cloven into a
series of Limestone seracs, between which the stream found its way
down into the remoter cavities. Masses of clay, some 15 feet thick,
deposited by the ancient waters, still flanked this rugged portal
into the unknown. Bones of sheep, cattle, horses, and lesser mammals
lay about in profusion, enough to reconstruct whole skeletons; with
them were the relics of animals now extinct on Mendip, deer and other
creatures. Higher up sherds of Samian pottery had been found, brought
down by the stream from the rubbish heaps of long ago. What struck the
imagination as still more wonderful was that in this sunless spot, 300
feet below the surface, there were creatures that lived. Empty snail
shells were abundant, but yet more plentiful were tiny snails that were
actually crawling over the clay, feeding, no doubt, on water-borne
vegetable matter. Gossamer-like webs stretched across many chinks in
the Limestone, but the microscopic spiders we could not see. What flies
did they live on? Surely not the caddis, whose corpses lay about in
plenty on every shoal.
From this chamber the stream quickly descends into the great Water
Rift, one of the most wonderful things in the whole cavern. It is but
a few feet wide, but its height is enormous. The walls go up like
mountain cliffs, but are lost in gloom instead of mist. Here tremendous
changes had taken place since the former exploration. At that time
the rift was blocked up in one place by a vast barrage of rock and
stalagmite, that came down to the stream and forbade human progress
save by one strait and difficult way. At a height above the water a
hole ascended seven feet into the barrier, its orifice all but closed
by a fringe of stalactites. Contriving to enter, the explorers crept
up this pipe, and down a corresponding one on the other side, coming
out on a cliff face overhanging the continuation of the Water Rift, to
attain the bottom of which was an abstruse gymnastic problem. A little
farther on they reached the utmost limit of their journey, where the
stream beats violently against the termination of the rift, is hurled
sideways, and finds an outlet through a low crevice, whence it tumbles
in a 40-foot cataract into an unknown pool. Our main object to-day had
been to descend this 40-foot pitch; that was the reason why we had
encumbered ourselves with two long ropes. But now all was different.
In the short interval that had elapsed since the former visit, the
strength of the ungovernable torrent had swept away the whole of this
vast structure, the work of thousands of ages--for the Pyramids are
recent erections compared with these products of unimaginably slow
crystallisation. Hardly a vestige remained; and now the current dashed
unimpeded from end to end of the Water Rift, and the incessant thunder
of the cataract deafened ears already attuned to the noise of the
higher falls and canyons. Probably the removal of stones and dams by
the former party, in making their way down, had contributed largely to
this extraordinary event.
Nothing could be done in the face of such a volume of water. We turned,
accordingly, out of the main passage into a lofty gallery or transept
that branches off to the west, the general direction of the cavern
being due south. To say it branches off is slightly incorrect, for it
is really the course of a tributary brook, and quite possibly may have
been in remote times the channel of the main stream. At all events
its shape and magnitude indicate that it was once a very important
section of the cavern. Scrambling cautiously along the sides of the
toppling fragments of the mole, we crossed a deep gap and entered the
gallery. At the portal a great hollow corbel of stalactite stood out
from the wall, like an enormous stoup, its huge rims curved over like
the petals of a flower. It stood there in solitary grandeur, but it was
a token of transcendent glories beyond. A few more steps, and we saw
that we were on the threshold of a fane more beautiful than any made
with hands. The rocks to right and left were sheeted with crystalline
enamel, its surface powdered thickly with a minute splash deposit, so
frail that it gave one a twinge to crush the lovely efflorescence as
we moved. One could not go a step without destroying hundreds of these
delicate spicules, the work of untold ages of water action. More great
corbels stood out from the walls as we advanced; they were richly
moulded with concentric rings of stalagmite, and these again were
carved and chased with wonderful reliefs. From the corbels sprang huge
pillars right to the roof, pillars 40 feet in height; and from their
capitals shining curtains hung down in ample folds, heavy as Parian
marble, and as lovely in hue. One would have called them white, had
we not seen, hanging from a cleft high up in the lofty walls, a mass
of curtains as white as arragonite, the whitest thing there is. So
dazzling was their immaculate purity that the rich creamy surface of
the other incrustations showed dusky in comparison. We were veteran
cave explorers, yet it seemed to us that all the caves we had ever
seen in Britain could no more vie with this than parish churches
with cathedrals. At each turn there was a new and more enthralling
vista: more pillars, ampler curtains, piers and arches of Oriental
magnificence, fluted and moulded into wildest fantasies. It struck one
with a curious wonder to think that all these splendours had lain here
unbeheld by living eye, untouched by a gleam of light, until one casual
year in the twentieth century.