glorious porches already described, and on and on between walls of
calcspar and arragonite, toward the chief wonder of Lamb's Lair, the
Great Chamber. The original passage was low and difficult, and early
explorers cut a deeper way through solid beds of arragonite, whose
miraculous whiteness glistens on every side as we advance. So enormous
is the thickness of this compact and fine-grained variety of the
calcium carbonate, with its delicate lines of crystallisation showing
transparently where it is shattered, that fully three and a half feet
are shown in section, a wall of snowy brilliance; and one cannot judge
how much more is hidden. The tunnel widens into an arch of reddish
rock, covered with sparry reliefs; then suddenly we find ourselves
stepping on a plank, and out of the darkness ahead starts up the gaunt
shape of a windlass. We have reached the spot where the gallery breaks
into the upper part of the Great Chamber; under our feet is a black
void, and further progress is forbidden. The gallery ends on a sloping
bevel, 10 feet wide, that dips steeply into the chasm. On this bevel,
which overhangs by many feet the receding wall of the Great Chamber, a
timber platform was erected a quarter of a century ago. It is a sort of
cantilever, with the windlass resting on the long arms. We moved here
with utmost caution, hardly venturing to place a foot on the time-worn
structure without holding on to the rocks at the side. On the last
occasion that the cavern was visited, some years ago, a fatal accident
was averted almost by a miracle. The rope broke while Mr. Balch was
descending; he fell about 60 feet, on to the broken rocks beneath,
checking his fall by catching at a tangle of line that was hanging
near. His hands were cut to the bone, and he lay at the bottom stunned
for a quarter of an hour, and has hardly ceased to feel the effects
of the shaking. Naturally, he now felt little inclination to venture
another descent, especially as he told us that the rickety state of the
platform has filled him with grave doubts as to its safety if weight
were put on it.
At present, beyond the stark shape of the windlass, darkness reigned.
We flung blocks of arragonite out into the void. There was an interval
of silence, then a crash on the hard floor, and the missile burst
into fragments. When the ray of our 2000-candle-power searchlight
flashed across the abyss, we found ourselves looking into a chamber
whose weird majesty held us spellbound. Its height is 110 feet, and
the walls curve gradually over in an irregular dome. Hardly a square
foot of this mighty wall-space is blank. Stripes and reticulations
and pendulous lacework run all over it in enchanting disorder. Here a
snow-white flood of calcite drops from an unseen cleft, there a cascade
of many colours ripples down from roof to floor. There are great sheets
of opaline enamel, curtains drooping in massy folds, silken fabrics
wrinkled over the face of the rock, all giving one the sense of motion
suddenly arrested, and of light and colour captured from the rainbow
and sleeping here in the darkness, waiting year after year for our lamp
to awaken it to life and beauty.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO GREAT CHAMBER, LAMB'S LAIR.
_Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth._]
[Illustration: LARGEST CHAMBER IN SOMERSET, LAMB'S LAIR, HARPTREE.
_From Sketch by H. E. Balch._]
The cylinder of oxygen and the ether saturator were pushed out as far
as we dared, and the camera was set up on the edge of the platform,
to secure at least a glimpse of this hall of wonders. We were told
what lay beyond. Another gallery, begemmed as richly as the one behind
us, leads on and on, until a high chamber is reached, into which
water pours over a sheet of snowy stalagmite, 60 feet high. We could
not descend into the Great Chamber, but we intended to light it up.
A tinful of Bengal fire was put into an iron saucer, hanging from
a string by iron wires; and this with a light attached was lowered
through the hole in the platform, whereon we lay extended at full
length looking over into the gulf. There was a fizz, and then the
fierce radiance swept from side to side of the huge vault, staining the
sheets and curtains and cascades of white a splendid crimson. The walls
sparkled blood-red as if set with rubies, and the blue-black sheets of
calcite marked by oxide of manganese were empurpled by the glow. We
fled before the pungent clouds of smoke that rose into our gallery,
back to the Beehive Chamber, leaving that glorious hall once more to
solitude and silence.
The only other part we explored was the winding tunnel that begins
under the second porch in the Beehive Chamber. It goes far away down,
and is knee-deep in mire for a considerable distance. At last, when it
seems as if the Great Chamber itself cannot be far away, the passage
ends in a choke. We had been in the cavern about five hours, when,
after much hard work, we got our apparatus back to the foot of the
shaft. Climbing ahead up the rickety ladders, the broken rungs of which
were caked with mud and clay, and keeping hold of the life-line all
the while, I found our driver waiting for us at the top, for we were
an hour late. Several dangerous stones were shifted in pulling up the
luggage, and one man below not only received a nasty blow, but narrowly
escaped destruction by another stone that he just succeeded in warding
off his face.
We have since regretted that we did not test the platform and windlass
by a rough-and-ready method, and then descend by a long Alpine rope.
The sharp ledges underneath might, however, have rendered this
dangerous. We had not seen everything, but we had seen enough to
recompense us abundantly for the toil, the slight risk, and the dirt.
Murray says that Lamb's Lair is the finest cave in Somerset; I would
confidently venture further, and say that for transcendent beauty it
has not its equal in England.[4]
E. A. B.
[4] Mr. James McMurtrie, then manager of Earl Waldegrave's estates,
was responsible for the exploration of this cavern after its
rediscovery in 1880. He had it surveyed and plans made; he had the
windlass erected, but went down himself before it was fixed. Very
great credit is due to him for this valuable work, which it is hoped
will not be rendered less valuable by allowing the artificial shaft
as well as the windlass to be permanently destroyed through neglect
and decay. The plan and section contained here were the result of
independent measurements, which fully confirmed the results of his
previous survey.
[Illustration: STALACTITES IN ENTRANCE GALLERY, LAMB'S LAIR.
_Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth._]
A CAVE IN THE QUANTOCKS
At Bridgewater, where we had arrived one winter morning at sunrise,
after a melancholious journey in unwarmed carriages across the flooded
moors beyond Glastonbury, not a person had heard tell of a cave in the
Quantocks. But the information we relied on, though a century old, was
definite enough to warrant the hire of a trap to convey us and our
apparatus to a certain lonely cross-road, seven miles away, in a corner
of the broad parish of Bloomfield. Climbing steadily through Enmore,
we found the cross-road on a hilltop 800 feet above the sea, hard by
a homely tavern, where we got cider for ourselves and feed for the
horse. To our west was the Beacon on Cotherstone Hill, and two miles
farther the Fire Signal Pits on Will's Neck (1261 feet), the highest
of the Quantock Hills. But of the red-deer country that lay around us
we saw little, and less as the day wore on, for a cold sea-mist came
rolling up from the Bristol Channel, and would have given us trouble
in finding our cave, had not a guide appeared providentially. It was a
tattered and weather-beaten countryman, who emerged from the tap-room
and announced that he was the only person who knew anything about
the cave. He dilated in glowing terms on its beauties--"It be very
ornamental, sur, very ornamental." Fox by name and fox by nature, so he
described himself--for he was both garrulous and egotistical--he was
fond of burrowing into holes. That he was a poacher to boot, we had no
reason to disbelieve after a few minutes' conversation. He led us by
a veritable fox's path over fields and hedges, through a mist-drenched
spinney, down to a dingle, where beetle-browed rocks overhung the
entrance to the cave. A rusty iron gate barred the way, and was
padlocked. Reynard proposed to make a journey of several miles, at our
expense, to procure the key; but a broken link in the chain saved us
time and cider.
There is not much Limestone on the Quantocks, and caves are a rarity.
At this spot an outlier of Carboniferous Limestone lies in close
contact with beds of Greywacke Slate--a very unusual conjunction,
which prepared us for something new and strange in the way of
crystallisations. Descending a few yards beyond the entrance, the main
passage rises a little, and then drops gradually towards a stagnant
pool, beyond which it is impossible to get. The length of this portion
is only 140 feet, and the direction from north-east to south-west.
Certain narrow passages, however, bore into the Limestone on the north,
and extend their ramifications much farther. Only one of these seems
to have been known before our visit. In the main passage, near the
pool, is seen the special wonder of Holwell Cave, a brilliant display
of arragonite crystals all over the roof. Arragonite usually occurs
in massive deposits of satin spar, distinguished by a perfection of
whiteness when newly split, a whiteness that grows dingy very soon if
you try to keep specimens. Here it occurs in quite another form--the
coralloid, known as flos ferri; thousands of filaments or spicules
ramifying from centres, and looking as soft as cobweb, though as
brittle as blown glass. This delicate product is often tinged with a
pink stain like that of fluor-spar. Andrew Crosse, the electrician,
who was carrying on his researches in the neighbourhood when Holwell
Cavern was found about 1800, thought that the crystal might have been
distorted by slow degrees into these fanciful shapes "through the
invisible action of electric energy," an agent to which most mysterious
natural processes have been attributed some time or another; but the
fibrous arragonite, scientists tell us, is by no means abnormal. It all
lies on the Greywacke part of the roof; the adjoining Limestone has
no arragonite, but is incrusted with the usual sheets and bosses of
calcite, mutilated somewhat by visitors who have taken away mementos.
"Ain't it ornamental, sur?" said our conductor; but his exclamations
were still more enthusiastic when the magnesium ribbon lit up the
millions of arragonite crystals that covered the roof with a glistering
efflorescence. Then the flashlight blazed out, as our camera got into
action, and the old man was speechless with amazement. He had known the
cave, boy and man, all his life, but never before had he, or anyone
else for that matter, gazed upon all its beauties. Several photographs
were secured--among them the portrait of a sleeping bat clinging to the
groining of calcite--and then the cave grew too smoky for further work.
So we went off to explore.
First we climbed into an opening high up in the north wall. It seemed
to run parallel with the main passage, and soon we beheld daylight in
front. Ere we reached the open air, however, we came to a steep drop,
and found that the branch had simply brought us back to the vestibule
of the cavern. Another opening, near the entrance, running due north,
proved more interesting, leading eventually to a bell chamber, floored,
walled, and roofed with polished carbonate. Someone had reached this
point twenty years ago, so dates and initials testified; but there were
virgin passages branching off to left and right for us to investigate,
as far as bodies of speleological slimness were admissible.
A squeeze through a crevice in the east wall led into a parallel
tunnel, depressingly low and painfully narrow, which seemed to run on
indefinitely to the north. The soft clay floor showed it was at times
the path of a heavy stream. Northward, it shrank to a mere drain-pipe;
southward it led by one joint and culvert to another, all at right
angles, into other straight channels, all going in the same general
direction. My companion stuck fast a little way beyond the first
tunnel; I pushed on like a weevil into the maze of perforations, but
met the same fate at last, not giving in, however, until I had been
held as in a vice at one point for a good five minutes, with boot
jammed, candle out, and no room to get my hand to the pocket where the
waterproof matches were safely stowed away.
It was still possible to see a long way ahead, by candlelight and
magnesium; and we made out that north of the known cave lies a whole
network of dry waterways, the principal channels running due north,
roughly parallel to the Limestone escarpment in which the cave mouth
opens, and all connected together by rectangular branches. One channel
brought us within view of daylight; but the crevice was too small for
anything but a rabbit, and we had to return by the same arduous and
abrading passages we had come by. As old Fox would have said, the
things we saw were "very handsome," but we could not tempt him to enter
this uncomfortable region.
E. A. B.
CAVE EXPLORING AT ABERGELE
Travellers on the North-Western to Holyhead or Snowdonia are familiar
with several cave mouths that form a prominent feature in the Limestone
cliffs above Lord Dundonald's castle, near the station of Llandulas.
The most conspicuous is a vast antre near the cliff-top; and legend
has it that this opens into passages running for great distances,
and eventually descending beneath the sea. (Welsh cave-myths are not
less extravagant than those of Derbyshire and Somerset, where stories
of dogs, geese, and other animals that have made long pilgrimages
underground and come into daylight again divested of feathers or hair,
are still piously cherished by the credulous.) The name attached to
this group of caves, Tanyrogo--"under the cave"--is derived from
the Celtic ogo or ogof, a cavern, and is almost identical with the
original name of Wookey Hole in Somerset. A party of explorers from
Liverpool and Colwyn Bay have recently carried out some researches in
the Tanyrogo caves, and in those at St. George, on the other side of
Abergele; and while verifying their disbelief in the supposed extent of
the subterranean galleries, have ascertained many interesting facts as
to the formation and the geological history of both series.
A grassy terrace runs along the cliff face to the gaping portal of
the Ogo, the biggest of the Tanyrogo caves, which looks seaward and
commands a magnificent view over the coast and the Irish sea. The
prehistoric men who doubtless lived here once showed not only good
taste in the choice of a site for their residence, but a judicious eye
for military possibilities; the place is all but impregnable, save by
starvation, the only access being by this narrow ledge, which a handful
of men could defend against an army. Spanned by a noble arch is a
colossal vestibule, rock-floored and dry. But this imposing entrance
is a deception--there is nothing beyond to compare with its shape and
magnitude. We swerved to the left, and at once found ourselves treading
a floor of wet clay, which began to ascend, and soon steepened into
a high bank leading up towards the roof. Creeping under an arch, we
found ourselves in a transverse fissure that may have run as far as the
legends pleased, but grew too narrow in a few feet for any human being
to penetrate farther. A few rudimentary stalactites and a crust of pure
white calcite adorned one small grotto; the rest was bare rock walls
and rugged arches, springing here and there high into the darkness,
in fissures that must reach very nearly to the summit of the cliff. A
branch passage dwindled away still more quickly, and so did a minor
opening that looks like a side door to the main entrance.
The rock structure of the cave arches is displayed in very beautiful
ways in this cavern, but the most interesting feature is the remnant
of an old cave floor. The cavern was evidently formed in pre-Glacial
times, and the vast quantities of clay that plug it up almost entirely
now must have been carried in by the ice. After the glaciers had
receded, the normal agencies began their work again; a stalagmite floor
was formed by the drip of water from the roof, depositing a layer of
calcite; this in the course of time was broken down again, and now
leaves a kind of high-water mark all round the walls of the cavity.
[Illustration: THE OGO, NEAR ABERGELE.
_Photo by E. A. Baker._]
[Illustration: INSIDE THE OGO, NEAR ABERGELE.
_Photo by E. A. Baker._]
The line of the fissure creating the upward chasms inside the cave
can be traced in the external configuration of the cliff; in sundry
vertical openings in the face, and in the clean-cut walls, where
sheer masses have fallen away, broken at the joints. Similar joints
and fissures played a part in the formation of a lower tier of caves,
which we explored next. The first was only a yard or two wide, but very
lofty, and its floor was composed of a level bed of sand and clay.
This gradually rose as we walked into the darkness, until the cave
ended more abruptly even than the last. We noticed pebbles of Bunter
sandstone in the floor, and the next cave produced many more examples
of the same stone, which must have been brought from a long distance,
the nearest strata corresponding to it being in Wirral. At the back of
this next cave a bank of cave earth and boulder clay was piled right
up to the roof, so steeply that it was not too easy a climb to the
summit. Arrived there, we found no possible egress; but a horizontal
tunnel, a sort of squint or hagioscope probably more than forty feet
long, gave us a peep through the rocky cliff out to the sunlight. We
set out forthwith to discover the outside orifice of this curious hole,
and found it came out on a ledge in the face of the cliff, hard by an
open platform which had a very queer look about it. On examination
this proved to be the floor of an old cave that had been destroyed by
the quarrymen. Half-embedded in thick clay were a number of stalagmite
pedestals, and a floor of stalagmite underneath several feet in depth,
surmounting a thick bed of boulder clay stuck full of Bunter pebbles.
It was obvious that the quarrymen, coming across this mass of useless
material, had not troubled to attack the solid layer of stalagmite
above it. The remains of stalactites and stalagmite curtains still
adhered to the neighbouring cliff.
The spot is well worth visiting, if only to see this remarkable
illustration of several consecutive chapters in the history of a
cavern. The destructive work of the Limestone quarry, having been
checked at this particular point, exposes the whole thing as in a
diagram; and the actual evidences are there just as they were produced
by the forces acting in successive epochs--the mouth of the original
cave, formed perhaps in pre-Triassic times; the masses of drift
thrust in by the glaciers; and the new cave floor, with its growth of
stalagmites. Since the caves lie at a height of several hundred feet
above sea-level, it is fairly certain that the moving glaciers exerted
an upward as well as a horizontal force, shoving the plastic masses
of clay and débris into the ascending passages, and caulking up, no
doubt, a good many tributary galleries that are now unknown. The caves
look north, and the material pushed into them must have come from
seaward; there is, furthermore, no rock in the adjoining districts
that could have yielded this kind of pebbles: so that it appears the
stream of glaciers which flowed across from Lancashire and Cheshire,
impinging against the contrary flow of ice from Snowdonia, must be
held responsible for the presence of these dense deposits. All along
the meadow-lands between the Limestone hills and the sea a series of
risings or big springs are noticeable from the railway, forming large
pools. These are the outlets of the drainage that has been absorbed by
the Limestone strata, through which the water has found its way until,
meeting with an impermeable layer of rock, or reaching the plane of
saturation at sea-level, it has been forced to the surface.
[Illustration: IN THE OGO, NEAR ABERGELE.
_Photo by E. A. Baker._]
The St. George's Caves are situated on and about a wooded hill of
Limestone near the village, which adjoins the low-lying lands of Morfa
Rhuddlan, the scene of a murderous battle in the year 795. The Celt,
with his strong historical imagination, such a factor in national
solidarity, still remembers, though confusedly perhaps, some incidents
of that calamitous fight. The old woman who pointed out the situation
of the caves drew our attention to the ditch and rampart which run
round the hillcrest, where it is not protected by cliffs. There, she
said, the routed Welsh tribes had entrenched themselves and fought
desperately on until every man was put to the sword. The wood on the
hilltop is full of graves, she told us, and weapons often come to light
there.
A great master-joint or fissure runs across the hill towards the
battlefield, and in it lie the caves, or rather the cave, for so far
as we could make out they are all parts of one stream-channel. At the
top of a cliff that is now being worked for lime is a small orifice, a
mere fox's hole, blocked up against Master Reynard or the badgers that
often find a home in these small caves. A hundred feet beneath it is a
larger opening, which is said to give entrance into several good-sized
chambers; but that also has been carefully built up with fragments of
Limestone by the quarrymen. We were driven accordingly to seek the
outlet of the cave, and this we found by following the smooth, straight
escarpment, produced by the fault, in a wood close to the mainroad.
A large stream once issued from the cave mouth, but has since become
engulfed in some internal swallet, and emerges a few yards lower down,
welling out from a funnel of crystal water some 15 feet deep. The cave
itself discharges a stream only in flood-time. There, too, we were
stopped from penetrating far by the beds of clay that gradually rose
to the cave roof; but in this instance the deposits had been made by
the stream, and were not the results of glacial action pushing upwards.
In fact, this is a cave with quite a modern history, one still in
working order, and used as a waterway at the proper times and seasons
by the stream that made it. The Tanyrogo Caves, on the other hand,
have ceased for untold ages to be actual water-channels, having been
deprived long ago by denudation above and behind them of the greater
part of their drainage area. And since that remote epoch they have gone
through the series of vicissitudes so plainly recorded in their present
physiognomy.
[Illustration: A PRE-GLACIAL CAVE, LLANDULAS.
_Photo by E. A. Baker._]
CAVE DISCOVERIES ON THE WELSH BORDER
The other day, a Liverpool friend, who has a bungalow in the Ceiriog
Valley, close to Offa's Dyke, told me he had found a cave there, which
had never been explored, but was reputed to go six miles underground,
to the neighbourhood of Oswestry. He invited me to come down and
explore it, and I readily agreed, on the condition that he was to seize
the opportunity to make his début as a cave explorer. On the side of
the valley where the cave lies the hill falls steeply to the Ceiriog,
and the densely-wooded cliff of Limestone that bathes its foot in the
river is like a bit of Dovedale. Not so the other side of the valley,
where different strata crop out, and the hills, with all their trees,
rise more gently to the brow overlooking Llangollen.
The cave mouth is about 20 feet above the river, in a cliff facing due
north, in which the Limestone is tilted at an angle of 45 degrees.
It is recessed within a lofty arch, but the entrance itself is low,
compelling us to creep for the first few yards. After two or three
bends, the roof as well as the floor rises, and the passage opens into
a chamber whose floor is heaped up to a height of 10 feet with fallen
débris, thickly plastered with mud. At first the cave runs due south,
but the main axis of this chamber, which is lofty and measures about
20 feet by 20, runs east-south-east. The roof rises about 20 feet
higher than the central heap of débris. Water drips occasionally, but
there are no stalactites. At the far end the passage turns south-east,
and, though lofty, is narrow, the walls being parallel, and tilted at
an angle of 20 degrees from the perpendicular. Then a second chamber
widens out, 50 feet long by 6 feet broad, as muddy as the former.
Rising 10 feet, the passage continues to the east-south-east, but
the walls converge for a time, forcing us to crawl, extended on our
sides. Then it opens out again, and we climb over more heaps of débris
littering the floor, and all bedaubed with thick, tenacious clay.