arrived at the Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. The earth was covered with its
autumn carpet of dry dark leaves,--brown and glossy on one side, deep
violet on the other,--and crinkling and crushing beneath our tread, they
kept up a staccato treble to the dulcet sighing of the wind through the
yellow leaves still lingering on the trees. A delicious concert of sweet
sounds, and one that Mozart and Mendelssohn must have studied well and
carefully. The atmosphere was bright and clear as under a summer sun,
but without the heat; the air as fine and bracing as winter, but without
the cold. We lost sight entirely of the two great tormentors, heat and
cold, and for the few days of our stay forgot their very existence.
I have heard of persons feeling, under the effect of laughter, as light
and buoyant as if floating in ambient air. The atmosphere during their
"Indian summer" must, doubtless, be strongly impregnated with oxygen,
for we experienced a similar sensation; which was probably deepened by
the fact of our having come from Louisville, where those hotel stairs
had seemed a perfect toil to us.
The country around the caves, for eight or ten miles, was a series of
deep ravines, studded with projecting cliffs and rocks, and covered with
oak--principally the English oak--and another gigantic species, with
leaves from a quarter to half a yard long, but of the same form as the
ordinary oak-leaf. Up and down the ravines we scrambled and roamed, as
happy as goats or wild chamois. These ravines, or glens, have no doubt
been the beds of some ancient river, now, perhaps, flowing through the
bowels of the earth; for this part of the country is intersected by
underground rivers, a stream often suddenly appearing, which, after
flowing on for a few miles, plunges rapidly into the earth and is lost
to sight.
An anecdote is told of two millers who had their mills on two different
rivers, thirty miles apart. There had been a long drought, and neither
mill had been working; but one day miller No. 1 heard his wheel going
round at a tremendous pace, and going to examine it perceived a quantity
of water, although there had not been a drop of rain for some time. He
went over to communicate his good luck to his neighbor.
"Oh!" exclaimed miller No. 2, "you're gettin' my water unbeknownst, for
a cloud burst over us the other night and nearly drowned us all."
It was evident the millers were working the same stream, which ran for
thirty miles underground, similar to the lakes in Florida, called sinks
(for Americans call everything by gross-sounding names), which suddenly
disappear, leaving all the fish stranded. Sometimes the water returns,
sometimes not....
Independent of the caves, the scenery around, to a lover of nature, is
well worthy of a visit, and for a summer resort is unsurpassed; shady,
romantic walks through the woods; a delicious air breathed from the
gigantic mouth of the cavern, whence, in the hot months, it blows cool
and refreshing; in the cold ones soft and warm; the actual temperature
of the cave never varying. The sensations of heat and cold are produced
by comparison with the outer air.
It occurred to a medical man some years ago that the _uniform
atmosphere_ of this cave might be a specific for consumption.
Possessed with this theory, the doctor had a dozen small houses
constructed in the cavern, about a mile or two from its mouth, and to
these he conveyed his patients. From the appearance of these places of
abode, the only wonder is that the poor invalids did not expire after
twenty-four hours of residence in them. They, however, contrived to
exist there about three months, most of them being carried out _in
extremis_. The houses consisted of a single room, built of the rough
stone of the cavern,--which, in this part, bears all the appearance of a
stone-quarry,--and without one particle of comfort beyond a boarded
floor, the small dwelling being constructed entirely on the model of a
lock-up, or "stone-jug." The cells of a modern prison are quite palatial
in comparison with them. The darkness is such as might be felt; and it
is impossible to realize what darkness actually is until experienced in
some place where a ray of sunlight has never penetrated.
From the mouth of the cavern to that part where the doctor's houses were
built was a continual, though gradual, descent, and at that spot there
was a solid roof of a hundred and fifty feet of earth. The houses--or
rather detached stone boxes--were so small that without vitiating the
air only one person could remain in them at one time; so that, besides
the darkness,--in case of any accident to their lamps,--these poor
creatures must have endured utter solitude. Their food was brought from
the hotel, two or three miles away, on the hill, and consequently must
have been cold and comfortless. They were kept prisoners within their
narrow cells, for the rough rocks and stones everywhere abounding
rendered a promenade for invalids quite impracticable. The deprivation
of sunlight, fresh air, and all the beauties of the earth must have been
the direst punishment imaginable. No wonder these poor creatures were
carried out one by one to die.
The last one having become so weak that it was deemed unsafe to move
him, his friends resolved to stay with him in the cavern till the last.
What transpired is now beyond investigation. Whether some effect of
light, which in this cavern has a most mysterious and awful appearance,
or whether the death-bed was one of terrors, owing to some imp of
mischief having laid a plan to "scare" them, as they say in this
country, is not known; but they rushed terror-stricken from the cave,
and on reaching the hotel fell down insensible. Subsequently they
declared they had seen spirits carrying away their friend. Mustering a
strong force, the people from _terra firma_, with the guides and plenty
of torches, sallied down to the lower and supposed infernal regions. The
spirits, however, had fled, leaving nothing but the stiffening corpse
of the poor consumptive. This ended all hope of the cavern as a cure for
consumption.
The Mammoth Cave is perhaps the most extensively explored cavern known.
It extends for nine continuous miles, so that it would be possible to
walk fifty miles in and out by different roads. The cavern consists of
various large chambers and lofty domes, averaging from twenty to one
hundred feet in height. Some of the chambers exactly resemble the tombs
of the kings of Egypt, and the narrow tortuous defiles through the rocks
are also very like the roads into the Pyramids. Most of these chambers
are merely natural excavations in the solid rock. One of the white-domed
ceilings is covered with a thick scroll-pattern traced in black, and
consists entirely of bats, which take up their winter quarters in these
caverns, and fare better in them apparently than the consumptives. It is
curious how these sightless creatures, from various parts of the
country, find out the caves, so impervious to light and cold, and where,
from the noise they make, they seem to have a merry time of it. Not so,
however, the visitors passing through this part of the cave; for the
bats are apt to fly right in one's face, or stick against one's clothes,
and bite furiously at any attempt to dislodge them.
Still farther on there is a vast vault, upward of eighty feet high,
formed of gypsum with some sort of crystals embedded in it. When you sit
and gaze on it for some time, by the dim light of the lamps, the vault
seems to recede into azure space. A bright sparkling veil hangs over it
like the milky way, seen dimly between the shelving rocks, which bulge
out in round soft layers, of a whitish-gray cast, and look exactly like
petrified clouds. By a judicious movement of the light of the lamps a
most beautiful phenomenon of cloud-scenery is effected, and by their
gradual extinction a Stygian darkness seems to wrap all in perfect
horror. This, the "Star Chamber," is one of the finest effects in the
Mammoth Cave, and it might be enhanced to the wildest magnificence by an
artistic arrangement of variously colored lights. The cave would be a
fine place in which to read Dante's Inferno.
Here and there through the cave there are immense pits or chasms, only
some few yards in circumference, but from two to three hundred feet in
depth. A piece of paper saturated in oil is thrown down and displays the
fearful gulf, the bottom of which appears to have the same formation of
rock and clay as the top. Sometimes we ascended ten or twenty feet by
ladders and occasionally descended. We traversed about a mile of passage
where the ceiling, six feet high, was as smooth and white as plaster
could have made it. It was literally covered with the names of former
visitors. In some places there were hundreds of cards on the floor, left
by guests,--so it is not only English people who have a mania for
inscribing their names. Indeed, as to that, it is common to most
nations, for I had a secretary named Van Kenkle, who wrote his name upon
every article belonging to me.
For eight or nine miles we continued to traverse passages and chambers,
sometimes over rough pieces of rock, sometimes through the thick dust of
ages, sometimes through the tortuous gorges,--mere slits between the
rocks through which we had to creep,--sometimes coming upon a well or
spring of sweet water. At about three or four miles from the mouth we
came to the chamber called "The Church," from its resemblance to the
ancient cathedral vault, frequently to be seen on the European continent
under churches or monasteries, and called the crypt.
This church of the Mammoth Cave is a singular phenomenon. The roof,
which is not lofty, is supported by a number of pillars, in many places
forming Gothic arches, and running at somewhat regular distances,
dividing the church into aisles. These columns are actually enormous
stalactites, and the fresco of petrified water upon them has all the
appearance of the most rich and elaborate carving. In some places the
pillars of stone have not quite reached the ground, and remain suspended
from the roof. Other and smaller condensed stalactites resembled the
drooping rosettes which unite the spring of Gothic arches. In one
portion of the church is an enormous stone, carved out exactly like the
bishop's chair, or throne, usually seen on the high altar. The altar
itself is very like those primitive stone edifices sculptured by the
early Christians, when driven to celebrate their worship in the
catacombs of Rome.
This chamber is a marvellous freak of nature imitating art, for the hand
of man has never touched it or worked it into shape; yet if any one were
transported here unconsciously, he would, on looking round, imagine
himself in the chancel crypt of some old cathedral of the ninth or tenth
century. Some romantic lovers, evidently influenced by this idea, had
actually, a few weeks before our visit, arrived at the cave, accompanied
by their friends and the clergyman, and caused the marriage ceremony to
be performed in that very church. It was a whimsical idea, and must have
been a cold, comfortless, clammy affair; but the feelings and sentiment
about weddings totally differ in America from our European notions on
the subject,--rarely is it a joyous merry-making, rather the reverse, as
I have mentioned in a former chapter.
A few miles farther on, we came to the great natural marvel, the
subterranean river, with its buried water and eyeless fish, its
beautiful parterres of stone flowers and shrubs, like a garden covered
with morning hoar-frost. On this dismal river we were launched in a
little skiff, not the most seaworthy in the world,--and I must confess
to having experienced a feeling of dread of being upset on that
mysterious stream, whose outlet might be, for all we knew, in a region
we did not care to visit, or even to contemplate the possibility of
visiting. The echo had a thrill of awe that made one's flesh creep and
hair stand on end. If one called spirits there from the vasty deep, and
they did not come, yet they certainly answered from the dark shadows of
the rocks falling around the lurid glare of the torches,--the only light
on the river of Erebus. It was quite easy to believe there were myriads
of spirits flitting around, and stretching out their weird arms to carry
us down to bottomless Hades.
There is another very interesting cave, which is not so frequently
visited by travellers, who when they have seen _the big thing_, are only
anxious to rush away again. It is not so extensive as the Mammoth, but
infinitely more beautiful and more inaccessible, the descent having to
be accomplished by ladders; but once down, it is a fairy-land, a
continuous scene of rapturous enchantment. The stalactites simulate the
most exquisite parterre of flowers, the most magnificent forest of
crystallized trees, the most wondrous marble carving, even to that
perfection of art which shrouds the figure in transparent drapery, like
"the statue of the Dead Christ" at Naples; nor was Apollo's charm
unknown there. Our guide tapped upon these magic crystals, and produced
the sweetest harmony ear ever heard, or at least it sounded so.
The walls of the chambers and passages were encrusted with the
stalactite flowers. They could be broken off their stems, and as so few
visitors ventured down, the guide allowed me to take one. One chamber
was absolutely curtained with this marvellous formation of petrified
water, and when the guide held the light behind the scene, it produced
the effect of being draped in the purest amber. These drooping curtains,
some fifty feet in height, emitted the most musical tones when struck.
If the physician had brought his patients to these fairy bowers, he
might, I think, have succeeded in sending them home quite cured, but I
believe the cave had not been discovered then.
With a brilliant light the spot was perfectly lovely, and the atmosphere
was that of constant, unchanged temperature, which puts the human lungs
in a state of beatitude. I should not in the least object to live in
that paradise of crystal flowers and adamantine forms, the most
beautiful that the imagination of man has ever conceived to be curtained
in living amber, and pillowed--well, I must admit that--in dust; but it
was such _clean_ dust.... The texture of these stalactites, when
examined by daylight, resembles alabaster, thus the leaves, flowers,
sprigs, are perfectly beautiful. Nor are these caves without their
incidents of life's drama. The grave and the gay have been enacted here
as elsewhere. The episode of the physician and his patients was sad
enough, but a more terrible tragedy resulted from a wager.
The guides are particular on entering the caves with a large party to
beg them to keep together, as it would be impossible for a person to
find his own way out of the labyrinth of passages, chambers, etc. Two
gentlemen of a party made a bet that they would accomplish the feat,
and, taking their opportunity, slipped away from their party, without
the guides being aware of their absence, and it was not until late in
the evening that the other party to the wager remarked that those two
foolhardy fellows had not found their way out of the cavern. This coming
to the ears of the guide, he exclaimed, "Then they are dead men!"
Nevertheless they went in full force to do everything that was possible
to find them, but spent the night in vain searches. Sometimes they came
upon their track in the soft dust, then lost it again.
On the following day the search was renewed by the guide who had
escorted the party, and his description of the finding of one of the
gentlemen was truly horrible: "It was the most tarnation cutting up job
I ever had in my life," said the guide. "We are not much of cowards, we
guides,--we get accustomed to awfulness down in the bowels of the earth;
but when that _critter's_ shrieks first came to my ear, I just shivered
all over and my feet rooted to the ground,--not that I did not wish to
save him, the poor devil, but I got an idea that that shriek came right
straight from hell and no mistake, and I had no fancy to go there before
I was sent for! Wall, when I had wiped my brow and taken a drink, I went
on in the direction of the sound, for it came every now and again, the
echoes making like fifty devils instead of one. I found him sooner than
I expected; he was a sight to behold; he flew at me like a tiger; he
clutched me, and pulled me, and wrestled with me, yelling and howling
like a wild beast. I thought he would have torn me to pieces. I should
not have known him again for the same gentleman. His eyes glared, his
mouth was foaming, and his hair on end, his clothes all torn and covered
with dust. He was a real raving maniac, and so he remained, as far as I
know. The work I had to get him out of that cave! He would stand stock
still and shake all over, then suddenly clutch at me again. I was the
stronger man of the two, and he was weak from long fasting, or I never
should have got him out. The doctor said he was fright-stricken."
And this was the case, as they thought, with the other poor fellow, who
was not found for weeks, it having been conjectured that he had fallen
down a hole. One of the guides making some new exploration, discovered
him sitting down, no sign of decomposition having taken place, and no
sign of his having died of starvation, for a piece of biscuit was found
in his pocket. He was supposed to have died of terror, the terrible
darkness working upon the nervous system, and the hopelessness of
penetrating it making the minutes appear hours. A guide who had once
been lost there himself for some twenty hours, said he never could
believe he had not been there for several days.
DOWN THE OHIO AND MISSISSIPPI.
THOMAS L. NICHOLS.
["Forty Years of American Life," by Dr. Thomas L. Nichols, is
the source of the following selection, which gives a graphic
and interesting picture of steamboat life on the great rivers
of the West in the days before the war. It needs only one thing
to complete the story, the race and the explosion, which was
no uncommon incident at that period, but an example of which,
fortunately for our author, was not among his experiences.]
We embarked on a little steamboat which drew twelve inches of water, and
whose single wide paddle-wheel was at the stern, and extended the whole
width of the hull. A succession of dams made the river navigable at that
season of low water, and at each dam we were let down by a lock to a
lower level. At the high stage of water dams and locks are all buried
deep beneath the surface, and larger steamboats go careering over them.
What I best remember, in crossing the Alleghanies and descending this
river, were the beds of coal. It seemed to be everywhere just below the
surface. We saw it along the route, where the people dug the fuel for
their fires out of a hole in the yard, ten feet from the door. Along the
high perpendicular banks of the river there were strata of coal ten or
twelve feet thick. Men were digging it down with picks and sliding it
into flat-boats, which, when the river rose, would float down with the
current to Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, and New Orleans. These frail
boats--long boxes made of deal boards nailed together, and loaded
nearly to the top--would many of them be lost. The swell of a passing
steamboat, or a snag or a sawyer in the river, would sink them. They
would ground on sand-bars. A sudden hurricane sometimes sinks a hundred
of them. Perhaps a third of the whole number are lost, but the coal
costs almost nothing--three halfpence a bushel--and brings a price
proportional to the distance which it floats in safety.
At Pittsburg, a city of coal and iron, smoky and grimy as Newcastle or
Birmingham, we took a larger boat, but still a small one, for
Cincinnati. The Ohio was very low. We passed slowly down, getting
pleasant glimpses of the towns upon its banks, and especially of the
flourishing cities of Cincinnati and Louisville.
I was disappointed with the Ohio for a few hundred miles from its
source, most unreasonable tourist that I was. I recall whatever I may
have said to its disparagement. The Ohio, charming in all its course of
a thousand miles, becomes grandly beautiful below Louisville for the
lower half of its course. Were it but deep as well as broad and splendid
in its great reaches and graceful curves and picturesque banks, nothing
would be wanting to its pleasing souvenirs. But I have tried its current
at an unfortunate period,--the river at its lowest point. At its highest
it would be fifty feet deeper,--a great torrent pouring onward towards
the sea.
We were all of us in high spirits on the "Fort Wayne." The crew was
firing up, and singing merrily below; and in the cabin we were sitting
round our good coal-fire, chatting, reading, and some playing poker,
calculating the next morning but one to wake upon the Mississippi. So
passed we down merrily, until, sunk upon a bar, we saw the wreck of the
steamboat "Plymouth," which two nights before had been run into by
another boat, which sunk her instantly, and her deck-passengers woke up
under the waters of the Ohio. Twenty unfortunates were drowned; and our
passengers, accustomed to the river, spoke of it with perfect
indifference, as a very common affair.
We passed this bar safely, touching bottom indeed, as we often did; but
in passing over the next we grounded firm and fast. The engines were
worked at their greatest power, but in vain. Efforts were made all day
to get the boat off, but without moving her, and older voyagers began to
tell pleasant stories of boats lying for three weeks on a sand-bar, and
getting out of provisions and wood. For us passengers there was but
patience, but for captain and crew there was a hard night's work in a
cold November rain. They went at it heartily, and when we woke up in the
morning the steamboat was afloat, and as soon as she had got in a fresh
supply of wood we went merrily down the Ohio again, putting off by a day
our arrival at the Father of Waters. So we went, talking on morals and
politics, reading the "Wandering Jew," and playing poker, until dinner
came; and just after dinner we came to another bar, on which we ran as
before, giving our crew a second night of hardship and toil, and us a
more thorough disgust of low-water navigation. We got off by morning as
before, by great exertion and the steady use of effective machinery, the
boat being hoisted over the bar inch by inch by the aid of great spars,
blocks, and windlass.
There was still, but a short distance below this spot, the worst bar of
all to pass.... Having been twice aground and lost nearly two days, our
captain determined to take every precaution. He hired a flat-boat, into
which were discharged many tons of whiskey and butter, and which was
lashed alongside. A boat was sent down to sound the channel and lay
buoys. This done, just as breakfast was ready, all the male passengers
were summoned to go on board the flat-boat, fastened alongside, with the
butter and whiskey, so as to lighten the steamer as much as possible,
and when we were all aboard we started down. As luck would have it, the
current carried the boat a few feet out of her proper course, and she
stuck fast again. The wheels could not move her, and we jumped on board
again to eat our breakfast, now grown cold from waiting.
This despatched, we went out on the promenade deck, and to our chagrin
saw the "Louis Philippe," which left Louisville one day behind us,
coming down, looking light and lofty, with a flat-boat alongside. She
came down rapidly, and passed close by us, her passengers laughing in
triumph at our predicament. The "Louis Philippe" had not got her length
below us before she too stuck fast and swung round into a more difficult
position, lying broadside upon the bar, with the strong current full
against her. The laugh was now on our side, and the "Louis Philippe"
gave rise to the more jokes, because her hurricane-deck was entirely
covered with cabbages, with their stumps sticking up, giving her a droll
appearance, while our hurricane-deck was filled with chicken-coops. It
was time now to go to work in earnest. More freight was discharged into
our lighter, and all the passengers, except the women and children, were
sent on board her. We thickly covered the barrels of whiskey and kegs of
butter, and the captain, to keep us off the steamer, cast us loose, and
we floated off with the current, and were safely blown ashore on the
Kentucky side, about a mile below, leaving the two steamers above to get
off as soon as they were able.