MUMMY CAVE OF KOSTER

Evening Star, Issue 18053, 22 August 1922, Page 1

MUMMY CAVE OF KOSTER

Tho mystery of the mummy cave of Koster, about eighty miles from Johannesburg, Inis not yet been solved. _ On the contrary, with further investigations and richer results, the problem becomes even more perplexing. Tho cave, which is reached by a drop of sixty feet sheer down into tho earth, descends from a little scrub-clad drill on the veldt and extends underground an enormous distance, 'the full extent of tho cave has not yet boon ascertained;, but it is known to bo immense. Parts of the roof would seem to indicate that at some time in the past there must have been a colossal subsidence of land, and tho rough roof which hides tho upper reaches might be considered tho result of a gradual filling in from drift substances above. But that would nut account for tho great open spaces below, which clearly were natural caverns, probably worn out of tho solid earth and rock by tho action of water or by volcanic effect long ages ago. If this point as to origin could be settled (says the ‘ Children's N«w*pai»r’» then wo might know the meaning of the host of mummified animals found in the dim, mysterious recesses. It is these creatures, most ol them perfectly preserved an mummies, which lend so extraordinary an interest, to the discovery, (hie of tho 'creatures, is a bird, rather like a young ostrich, hut with tremendous talons like those of a. hawk. _ There is a monkey, “six feet long,” v/nich if _ truly described, represents a species not in ex1, tence to-day. Of course if a goodsized baboon wi re stretched out and l measured from muzzle to tho extremity of ,no hind feet, that would make a respectable total of inches, but hero the discoverers speak of a true monkey, intact, but a mummy. In one of the. passages of the labyrinth stands a dead hartebcest, its pale leaden eyes complete and reflecting tho light of an, electric lamp tlasned upon it—a horrifying moment for the man who first saw it. Then, wedged info a crevasse, is what is described as a tiger, perfect, and) beneath tho tiger a deer. The two animals, conqueror and conquered, seem to have died together in the death grapple in which tho carnivore sought 'its meal. But a tiger the. conqueror cannot be, for Africa has no ttoere. It may have been a lion, but more probably 'it was a leopard. Whatever it was, there, in that amazing tableau, tho two creatures rest where death suddenly found them.

The story is certainly one of the most astonishing' in lire history of cave exploring. Many monkeys are there, curled up comfortably in natural sleeping attitudes, but dried and wasted as if they had not lived for a thousand years or more; and there are birds and other creatures unnamed, all dead, all watched over by swarming flocks of living bats, with whose n-uano the cave is feet deep. We may never know what created this Kosher ca,vc, never ascertain how this company of birds and animals came to their death, but geologists caa give us a rough guess as to the origin of the tomb, and good naturalists should make a shrewd guess, as to what brought the end of the creatures