situated in Edmonson County, near the Green River, ninety-four
miles from Louisville, and nine miles from Cave City, the station
on the Louisville and Nashville Railway where passengers get off
when they wish to visit the celebrated cavern. The Mammoth Cave is
world-renowned: I have found that the people of every nation, even our
antipodes, are acquainted with it, though that may be the only thing
in America of which they have any clear apprehension. I question if
there be any other natural curiosity half so well known as that. Never
have I travelled in any domain inhabited by intelligent people, who
had not only heard of it, but who did not have something like accurate
information respecting its extent and peculiarities. Famous as it is,
and easy of access, comparatively few of our countrymen have explored
it. Indeed, the very ease of its access has prevented a great many
persons from going there who would otherwise have gone. What we can do
at any time we are not likely to do at all; for any time is really no
time. I have met residents of Naples who had never ascended Vesuvius,
or seen the ruins of Pompeii. I am acquainted with citizens of
Schaffhausen who have never set eyes on the magnificent Rhine Falls.
There are Parisians who have never been in the Louvre Gallery, or the
Park of Versailles; Romans who have never stood before the Apollo, the
Laocoön, or the Transfiguration; Athenians who have never been within
the Parthenon; Cairines to whom the pyramids are a dream; denizens
of St. Petersburg unacquainted with Moscow; Viennese ignorant of the
Belvedere and Schönbrunn; Berlinese unfamiliar with Potsdam, and
cultivated Londoners who have never made a pilgrimage to Stratford, to
the tomb of the most wonderful genius the world has yet shown.
It is not strange, therefore, that Kentuckians, liberal as their
state vanity is, should often die without “doing” the Mammoth Cave.
I remember how often I went within a few miles of the cave before I
took the trouble to visit it, and that, finally, dissatisfied with
myself for its long neglect, I made a special journey from New York
to carry out my much deferred purpose. For several years a branch
railway has been talked of from Cave City to the Cave; but it has
never been built, needful as it is in the saving of time. Eighteen
miles of coaching, in these rapid and driving days, appear to the
average traveller considerable of a task; and when to this is added
the two full days required for an exploration of the enormous cavern,
it is easy to understand why so many persons refuse to examine the
subterranean chamber lying along the Green River.
[Sidenote: A SWINDLING MANAGEMENT.]
You cannot do the cave in much less than four days, owing to the
determination of the coach-driver and the keeper of the hotel to delay
tourists as much as possible. I still recall my first experience,
and the second and third have not been in any essential respect
dissimilar. The train reached Cave City at twelve o’clock, but the
vehicle that was to convey me to the vast cavern would not leave for
more than two hours, this arrangement being entered into by interested
parties to secure each passenger for dinner at the railway station inn.
The conveyance takes its departure very leisurely, and before you are
fairly inside or outside, as the case may be, you are obliged to pay
not only your fare to the cave, but your fare back, even if you have
no intention of returning for a month. This ruffles most people, and
impregnates them with the notion that the astuteness of negotiations
in that neighborhood is not far removed from swindling—a notion
apt to be strengthened as they go on. Arriving at the Mammoth Cave
Hotel, a great, rambling, ill-kept, uncomfortable collection of frame
buildings, of the kind of which travellers in the South cannot be
ignorant, you are informed that you are too late to enter the cave on
that day.
There are two routes—the long, and short; the former extending nine
miles from the mouth of the cavern, and the latter three miles. The
day following you can do either of these, but if you want to do both
you must remain two days. There is no need of this, since a strong
man, accustomed to exercise, can make the double subterranean journey
in ten or twelve hours without difficulty. Were he to do so, however,
the rustic Boniface would lose the price of one day’s board; and
hence the tourist must be put to serious inconvenience and delay for
merely mercenary reasons. Men frequently offer to pay twice or thrice
the rate of the day’s board for the privilege of making the entire
underground journey in a single day. This is refused, because it
would fully expose the trick, and give an opportunity for victims to
advertise the fraud.
You may grumble—that is the privilege of every free-born citizen—but
you can’t help yourself. The public house employs the guides, and the
guides will do nothing contrary to the annoying and cheating customs
it has established. The hotel, the coachmen, and the guides, are in
league one with the other, and as there is only one Mammoth Cave,
and only one way of getting into it, if you are really determined to
see it, you may growl and swear as much as you please, but you must
conform to the rules that have been laid down for the private benefit
of the little ring, and for your own disadvantage.
[Sidenote: DISCOVERY OF THE CAVE.]
[Sidenote: A NARROW AND MISTAKEN POLICY.]
The cave was accidentally discovered some seventy years ago by a
hunter, and ten years later was worked for the purpose of procuring
saltpetre; the company so engaged finding it unprofitable, and at last
abandoning it to curiosity-seekers. The property belonged originally
to a Dr. Croghan, who died some years since, leaving it to the heirs
of the [General] Jessup estate. These heirs are so anxious to make
money out of it, and so narrow at the same time, that they have
adopted a penny-wise and pound-foolish policy. They will not lease
the hotel for a period of more than five years, and, consequently, no
lessee can be had who will make such improvements in the house and
grounds as are needed. They are very fearful that a new entrance to
the cave, beyond the limits of their real estate, will be discovered;
and for this reason all visitors are forbidden to carry compasses, or
make topographical observations upon the bearings or directions of
the great natural tunnel. They have purchased, since 1860, some three
thousand acres in the immediate vicinity of the cavern, from their
apprehension that on the land which they so acquire another gateway
might be found. They realize, I have been told, from fifteen thousand
dollars to twenty thousand dollars per annum from the fees (two
dollars each for the short, and three dollars each for the long route)
charged inflexibly to every tourist. They might make more than twice
as much by putting up a good hotel, building a railway to Cave City,
and dealing fairly with travellers. Numerous capitalists have tried in
vain to buy the cave property; but its owners, or the executors, will
not sell. They refuse themselves to do anything for the benefit of the
public, even when their interest prompts, and they refuse to allow
anybody else the desirable privilege. This cannot very long continue,
however. Time removes hunkses as well as difficulties, and cures
meanness by putting it under ground.
The region about the cave is very high,—four hundred feet above Cave
City,—and is said to be superlatively salubrious. The neighborhood
is very sparsely settled, but dwellers in it, according to popular
report, are compelled to move away when they wish to die; and hence
it happens that wealthy old uncles and disagreeable mothers-in-law
are always informed that Edmonson County is one of the most unhealthy
localities on this continent.
Game, such as quail, rabbits, wild turkey, and even deer, is abundant
there, which, with the good fishing in the Green River, less than a
mile distant from the public house, should recommend the vicinity
to sportsmen, and would unquestionably, if the accommodations were
what they ought to be. As it is, most visitors get so vexed with the
obnoxious arrangements appertaining to the Cave that they hurry off
after exploring it, and seldom go back. Even their memories of its
grandeur are infected with the Little Peddlington spirit of its
management, and the poetry of the place overlaid with the prose of its
accompanying sordidness.
Nearly all the old guides familiar to visitors before the War, when
Bell’s Tavern was the starting-point for the underground journey,
have yielded to nature and to circumstance. One of the ancient band,
however, Sam Meredith, still lingers,—at least, he did a year or two
ago—and is a genuine autochthon. He has been a guide for a quarter
of a century; was born on the spot, and has never been twenty miles
beyond the limits of the county. He is naturally intelligent, though
he can neither read nor write; but he makes up for these slight
defects of education by his skill with the rifle. He is regarded
as one of the best shots in Kentucky; has a wife and children, and
a small farm; receives fifteen dollars a month; does not know that
the world is round; believes Paris, in Kentucky, is the capital of
civilization, and is, on the whole, as contented a mortal as I have
ever met.
[Sidenote: TEMPERATURE OF THE CAVE.]
In addition to the short and long routes already mentioned, the great
cavern has a vast number of avenues and branches, many of which remain
as yet unexplored. All these ramifications, taken together, would
give a length to the cave, it is said, of nearly three hundred miles.
Its temperature, all the year round, is 59° Fahrenheit. The interior
air is believed to be much purer than that of the outer world,
and, on account of its elasticity and sweetness, to be remarkably
invigorating. There seems some foundation for this opinion, inasmuch
as tourists can make much more exertion, and endure much more fatigue,
in that underground region than they can on the ordinary surface of
the earth. I have observed weak men and delicate women perform acts
of pedestrianism which astonished themselves, and of which they would
be incapable outside the mouth of the cavern. I know that I have done
thirty miles in those sombre recesses in a few hours without being
jaded in the least, and on one occasion I accomplished the last mile
of the long route—the roughest and most difficult of all—in eleven
minutes by a stop watch, which the guide pronounced the best cave time
on record.
[Sidenote: DRESSED FOR THE EXPEDITION.]
My last visit to the cave was during the spring of 1870. Early as the
season was, I found at the hotel about a dozen persons bent on the
same errand. Seven or eight of them were anxious to traverse the long
route, and as that was my purpose also, we rose betimes, and prepared
ourselves for the journey. There were several ladies in the party, and
they were obliged to part with their hooped skirts and city attire,
and put on water-proof cloaks, with the simplest possible arrangement
of their hair and toilet. We tyrants of the race donned some old
clothes, heavy boots, and caps, each taking a lamp attached to long
wires, so that we could hold it easily and swing it as we walked
along. Our conductor, who was no other than Sam Meredith, looked very
carefully after our lamps, to see if they were properly supplied with
oil and properly trimmed, since the consequences of having one’s
light go out in those desolate chambers, and of being left in awful
solitude and darkness,—perhaps forever,—are in no manner pleasant to
contemplate. At different parts of the cave, small tanks of oil are
kept, from which the lamps may be replenished in case of accident, and
these have proved to be invaluable in numerous instances.
Eight o’clock in the morning was our hour for starting, and though
we had become acquainted the evening previous, we were so changed in
appearance—thanks to our simple attire—that we were scarcely able to
recognize one another when we assembled for the march.
The masculine excursionists had not undergone such a metamorphosis
as our feminine friends, whose mothers would have been excusable for
not knowing them in the Spartan severity of their costumes. One young
lady, whom I had thought quite pretty, was anything but pretty in the
absence of her usual chevelure and modish robes. Another girl, still
in her teens, who had appeared decidedly plain, really shone with
comeliness and grace in her water-proof and generally dishevelled
state. Her common raiment so set her off that I was obliged to
conclude that none of her personal charms depended on her wardrobe,
and that the less she wore the lovelier she seemed.
[Sidenote: A GROTESQUE COSTUME.]
A bright and intellectual widow, to whom years had brought a
breadth of figure in which Hogarth’s line of beauty could not be
traced, looked positively grotesque in her unique garments. Agility
acknowledged no kinship with her, and symmetry was unquestionably of
alien blood. She expressed, from the beginning, her scepticism as to
her endurance, and particularly inquired of our rustic fugleman if
she could rest a little on the way, provided she should happen to be
spent. As we set out, she evinced a lack of physical elasticity and
clearness of movement that foreboded ill to her success. But for the
gallantry due to all her sex, I should say she waddled, and presented
such a figure that, if Cruikshank had caught a glimpse of her, he
would have claimed her for his own.
We were off at last, and in a few minutes were before the mouth of
the mighty Kentucky marvel. There is nothing remarkable in the mouth,
which conveys the impression of a decayed and abandoned culvert, and
such I should take it to be, had I not known otherwise. The path by
which you enter is damp and slippery, unless in very dry weather,
and the opening of the cavern promises none of the wonders that the
interior reveals.
After going less than a hundred yards, we lost the spot of daylight
which the mouth furnished, and were wrapped in such shadows as might
have marked primeval chaos. Our little lamps displaced so small a
part of the thick darkness that the vast volumes which remained grew
blacker than ever. The air was so full of oxygen as to be sensible
at once, and I could not help but notice an inflation of my lungs
and a lightness of my limbs, such as one feels on mountain-tops. My
spirits rose rapidly, and my mood grew involuntarily hilarious. I
jested constantly, I laughed at the smallest trifle. Buoyancy was
in every breath, and a mercurial quality, by a strange paradox, in
the surrounding gloom. The cave, if not delightful, was exhilarating
in the highest degree, and I fancied it would be agreeable to spend
nights there. I should say days, if the word did not convey an
impression of light. The effect of the place on me was entirely
different from that of the Paris Catacombs, owing, doubtless, to the
oxygenated air. The peculiarity of my temperament, however, which,
by a principle of antagonism, reflects the opposite of surroundings,
must have had something to do with it. Society which is considered
the gayest oppresses, and graveyards enliven me. It is not strange,
therefore, that the Mammoth Cave, apart from its atmosphere, should
animate my spirits.
[Sidenote: A REFUGE OF BATS.]
We noticed that the walls and roof of the cavern were frescoed with
bats hanging by their claws, heads downward, though some of them were
flying nimbly about in the darkness, evidently disturbed by the glare
of our torches, and the noise of our speech. During the winter they
assemble there in such quantities that the curves of the cave are
black with them. Their flitting through the thick gloom, relieved only
by the flare and glare of the lamps (added to the hollow and dreary
echoes awakened by our voices, and succeeded every few moments by an
oppressive stillness), made those vast limestone chambers appear so
dismal that the women of the party declared they should go mad if
forced to remain in them for any length of time.
Very soon we came to the remnants of a number of rude habitations
erected in 1845, and inhabited by certain consumptives who had been
recommended to try the equable temperature and pure air of the tunnel,
with the hope that their lungs might be healed. The poor patients
had high expectations from living there, and though their first
experience was not favorable, they remained several months, unwilling
to believe that they would not be ultimately helped. The longer they
remained, the worse they grew. After a while their faces became
livid; the pupils of their eyes expanded, and darkened until the
iris was invisible, having the appearance of two spots burning above
a deathly pallor. They lost every particle of flesh; crept gloomily
about, coughing so hollowly as to suggest the sound of the first
earth falling upon a coffin-lid; and added to the natural dreariness
of the vault a hundred-fold. Everybody saw and knew that they were
tottering on the brink of the grave; and yet, such was their hope—a
distinct and inseparable accompaniment of the disease—that they could
not be persuaded to quit that purgatory. They even imagined they were
improving, and insisted that they were stronger, when they could not
drag their leaden limbs after them.
[Sidenote: AN UNSUCCESSFUL SANITARY EXPERIMENT.]
The preciousness of existence (to most persons) was strikingly
illustrated in those poor consumptives who had no hold on life, and
still could not be resigned to death. One would think that serious
trouble with the lungs would disarm the grave of most of the terrors
it is popularly supposed to have (those who have had much familiarity
with death are aware that this is an error), since it destroys all
physical comfort, and all mental peace. And yet quite the contrary
is true. Generally, no man is so unwilling to order the undertaker
as the man who has long suffered from consumption, which shows how
inconsistent and unreasonable human nature is, especially after it has
been badgered by doctors and dosed with drugs.
Finally three or four of the consumptives expired in the cavern,—there
were nearly twenty of them in all,—and the remainder having it
borne in upon them that neither consumption nor the Mammoth Cave
could insure immortality, they consented to be removed. Every one
of them died—if they could be considered to have been in any true
sense alive—within a few weeks after their return to the sky and the
sunlight. But the history of their residence in those dreary chambers
will be remembered for generations, and in 4873 will have become one
of the traditions of the cave, so altered and exaggerated that very
few of the positive facts will be left or allowed to mar the poetic
and romantic version then current.
The cavern varies greatly in width and height, and so many avenues
branch off from it, that it would be almost impossible to thread your
way without a guide. A large part of the passages have been explored
at different times; but some of them are virgin yet. The majority of
the branches end on the bank of the river, and it is very strange
that new mouths to the tunnel have not been discovered. It is not
improbable that they have been; but the owners of the property,
as I have said, are so fearful of suffering from a rivalry in the
show business that they would be the last to disclose any such fact.
Different quarters of the cavern are differently named, according
to their actual or fancied resemblance to the titles they bear. It
requires a deal of imagination to trace the similitude sometimes,
though at others it is apparent at the first glance.
[Sidenote: UNDERGROUND CHURCH.]
The Methodist Church, one of the first localities of note, is a
semicircular chamber, in which a ledge of a rock represents the
pulpit. Theological service has been performed there, and the logs
brought in for seats are still in perfect preservation, though they
have been there more than half a century. More recently service has
been improvised by enthusiastic itinerants of the Methodist creed,
who, having heard that the groves were God’s first temples, may infer
that caves have an equal fitness for divine worship. The imagination
on which religious fervor so largely depends could not fail to be
kindled by burning tapers, swelling music, and earnest appeals in
those natural aisles and chancels, nor could they do other than remind
the pious participants of the primeval Christians who fled to caverns
and to catacombs that they might adore their Creator in secret, and be
preserved from persecution.
Just beyond the church is a figure of gypsum on the roof, a sort
of bas-relief called the American Eagle. Patriotism prevents me
from indorsing this symbolic bird, which, whatever it may have been
originally, is now sorely shorn and shattered. One leg, a wing, and
part of the body are literally relieved, being no longer visible under
the light of a dozen lamps; and the entire animal is so deranged that
it might as well be styled a dromedary or a griffin. The American
eagle is usually on such admirable terms with itself that I am
confident this bird would be ashamed to pretend that it is what it
is represented to be. If it be an eagle, I will be sworn it does not
know it. I choose to consider it a unicorn, since a unicorn is a
fabulous beast, and may be presumed to resemble anything, even that
amorphous gypsum figure on the roof. If the likeness cannot be traced
by ordinary observers, they may be reminded that it consists in the—or
more properly in a—horn.
Minerva’s Dome is remarkable for its fluted walls and a honey-combed
roof, though why it should be devoted to Minerva, who is not herself
present in any form of natural sculpture, is an enigma not to be
solved. The probability is, that Kentucky orators have so constantly
referred to Minerva springing full-armed from the brain of Jove, that
the goddess, even if she once had her image there, has removed it,
lest its sight might induce the five or six public speakers in the
state who have not used the time-honored simile to force it into their
next brilliant effort.
[Sidenote: THE FAT MAN’S MISERY.]
Near the Dome, those who wish to traverse the short route only, branch
off, while the long route is continued until the cave contracts, and
Fat Man’s Misery is reached. This is a passage through the rocks so
very narrow that a man of average proportions is compelled to go
sidewise. It must have been worn by a stream of water in the dim ages
past; and now the only stream of water visible is that which flows
down the sight-seer’s face, as he toils along, and crawls through the
Valley of Humility, where the roof is so low that you are obliged to
bend nearly double. Persons with weak backs, or inclined to lumbago,
have to return here with the fleshy people who have surrendered at
the Fat Man’s Misery. The Great Relief is a broad passage, a little
farther on, where tourists bring themselves to an erect position once
more, and mop their brows with their handkerchiefs, so frequently
brought into activity during their arduous journey.
[Sidenote: RIVERS IN MAMMOTH CAVE.]