THE MAMMOTH CAVE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6063, 23 April 1881, Page 6

THE MAMMOTH CAVE.

[BY O. W. GRIFFIN, TJ.S. CONSUL, AUCKLAND.] The State of Kentucky is celebrated for other things besides its Bourbon whisky, its blue grass regions, its blooded stGck, and beautiful women. It is the birth-place of the martyred President Abraham Lincoln, and has within its borders the largest cave in the world. The Mammoth cave is | situated in .Edmundson County, Kentucky, about 85 miles from the city of Louisville. It is not'difiicult to reach as the Louisville and Nashville railway passes within 10 miles of the mouth of the cave, and the rest of the journey is completed in less than two hours' time by a daily line of old fashioned English stage coaches. The Mammoth cave is not only the largest in the world, but it is also the most wonderful and the most interesting. More than 220 square miles of ground have been discovered in it. According to a statement recently made by the State geologist, its known and numbered avenues are 226, and how many more are yet to be discovered can only be left to conjecture. Some of these avenues are several miles in length, and of great and surpassing beauty and magnificence. They lead to far-winding subterranean rivers, unexplored lakes, interminable labyrinths, awful aisles, fairy grottoes, fathomless gulfs, and high pillowed domes, fretted with the semblance of birds, and stars, and .flowers. The Mammoth cave being no great distance from my residence in Kentucky, I have very naturally paid repeated visits to it. Indeed, ■ I have been in it so often that I should not hesitate to act as a. guide through no inconsiderable part of it, and on one occasion I went in nlone as far as the Bottomless Pit, or Maelstrom. The most notable visit I ever paid the cave was a few years ago, in company with my scholarly, friend, the Honourable Eugene Underwood, of Kentucky. We assisted in the organisation of a party of ladies and gentlemen, about one hundred in number, from various parts of America. It had been arranged that we should meet at the Cave Hotel, and remain in the neighbourhood long enough to get something more than a glimpse of the subterranean wonders of that section of the Statel We were accompanied by a military brass band and a corps of intelligent and trustworthy guides. Professor J. Laurence Smith supplied us with magnesium and calcium lights, for the purpose of illuminating I our progress. . ■-■'.'

We entered tho cave about nine o'clock in: the morning. Two of the guides and the band of music preceded us. Each person carried in his hand a small lamp. The glitterins lamps and the gay costumes of the ladies and gentlemen presented a picture of singular.beauty and magnificeuce, remindiug mo of : the stories of oriental splendour, or the descriptions of pageantry in the days of chivalry. . The gentlemen with few exceptions had on close-fitting caps, scarlet jackete with brass buttons, and light-coloured trousers. The ladies wore jaunty-looking gipsy hats, blue and black velvet basques, or plaid and striped bodices, and varied coloured dresses just touching the ankle. Some of these dresses were of very costly and beautiful material, and of all colours of the rainbow, and others were covered with a profusion of lace and gilt and silver tinsel. We had determined to depart from the usual custom of visitors to thecave, and take the long route first. The short route is not quite half the distance- of the long one, and is nothing like so fatiguing. As we approached the mouth of the cave we were met by a strong current of air, and our chief guide halted the party, and took his stand in front of the vestibule, and explained the phenomena. He said that the cave breathes twice a year—in - the winter and summer. The air rushes out of the oave for six months, and for the other six months it rushes in. The temperature of the cave has but little variation all the year round, and is about 57 degrees above zero Fahrenheit. The time of our visit was in the month of August, and at that season of the year the atmosphere of the cava is nearly 40 degrees colder than it is above ground. Chemical processes are always at work in the cave, surcharging the air with oxygen, and it must seek an outlet. In the winter the condition is reversed, as the weather is then always colder than the atmosphere of tho cave, and there is, of course, a warm current of air from it instead of a cold one. The even temperature of the cave, and the purity of its atmosphere, it being highly oxygenized and entirely free from all decayed vegetation, led ignorant persons some years ago to believe that consumptive patients could be cured by a prolonged residence there, and for this purpose, in' 1843, ten or twelve stone and wooden houses were built in the cave, and about fifteen patients were induced to live in them. The experiment, of course, proved a fatal one, the poor deluded sufferers all died, either in the cave, or shortly after they were taken out of it. The remains of these houses are still to be seen as monuments of their melancholy history. Our party moved into the cave apparently in very high spirits, and for a short time a cheerful buzz of conversation was heard ; but after we had descended the stone stairway, and penetrated further into the mysterious avenuos, silence became so supremo that it was only broken by the voice of the guides to warn us of the danger of a false step; and to point out to us the wonders of the subterranean world.

It would be quite impossible in the limits prescribed in this article to make mention of all the objects of interest iu the cave. I can only refer to a few of the principal ones. I remember that the Giant's Coffin was to mo a special wonder. It consists o£ a. huge block of stone about forty feet long and fifteen or twenty feet wide, aud eight feet thick, resting upon stone tressels, the whole work having evidently been detached from the walls and ceiling. The Star Chamber next won my admiration. It is fully five hundred feet in length, seventy-five feet in width, and sixty feet in height. Its lofty canopy is covered with a countless number of white spots, produced by the effects of sulphate of magnesia upon the black gypsum coating of the ceiling, and in gazing upon these spots it requires hut little help of the imagination to soe their resemblance to real stars' Th " d »'"«»'on is still further heiehtened when

the guide, as he often does, takes all the* lamps and retires behind a jutting rock andby moving the lights to and-fro, cause's the shadows to flit across the upper part of the chamber, not unliko the clouds of heaven A favourite practice of the guide is to leave the visitors in utter darkness until they begin ■' to fear that he does not intend to return'. "■'. He ; will then throw ligkt tipou the chamber gleam-' after gleam, until the whole horizon is bathed ' in rosy hues, reminding u3 of sunrise in the ■ tropics. Passing beyond the Star Chamber J we come to Proctor's Arcade. -.: It is between sixty and seventy feet hifih, and about a. quarter of a mile in length and.lso feet in ; width. Near to this is a spacious chapel, with a stone pulpit, : and rows of scats not unlike pews in a-church. 'Here the early settlers of Ken tucky ; were wont to worship ''■ their Creator amidst a gloom more appalling ° than that which hung upon Calvary on the ' night of the crucifixion of our' Saviour. After ■ leaving the our party hurried ' along to the River Styx, which, we crossed in - small boats. This river is about 40 feet in. width, and can be followed four or five ' hundred feet before it disappears.' Beyond - I the river is Lake Lethe, a broad and beautiful sheet of water. This lake can be crossed' either in boats, or by a long narrowpathway at the foot of precipitous walls One hundred feet above the water's edge ' Our party took the pathway, which led us to a small bridge spanning the neck of the lake. Crossing , the bridge, we came to a ' sandy beach, which we followed for a dis- ■ tance of half-a-mile, when we were'rewarded with a magnificent view of Echo'"' River, that wild arid wizard stream in which no star or rainbow ever glassed its image of * love and beauty. ; . ; ' : i: